Behavior of single bolt bearing on high strength steel plate

This paper presents an experimental program investigating the behavior of high strength steel connections consisting of one bolt in double shear. A total of 24 bolted connections fabricated from three grades of high strength steel with the nominal yield strengths of 550 MPa, 690 MPa and 890 MPa were tested. The effects of end distance, edge distance and steel grade on the bolt bearing behavior were evaluated. The bolt hole elongation due to bolt bearing on high strength steel plate was measured and its implication on the plate bearing resistance was discussed. The test results were compared with Eurocode 3 and AISC 360-10 predictions and it was found that Eurocode 3 could be used conservatively to predict the bolt bearing resistance on high strength steel with nominal yield strength up to 890 MPa whereas AISC 360-10 method tends to overestimate the bearing resistance of the bolted connection. A regression analysis was performed based on the test data and those from the literature so that a more general method was proposed to predict the bolt bearing resistance on normal strength and high strength steel plate. Splitting failure was observed as a transitional failure mode between tearout failure and net cross-section failure. Splitting failure showed a lower resistance than the bolted connection with tear-out failure, therefore, a reduction factor was proposed to improve the prediction. The upper and lower boundaries of end distance to edge distance ratio for splitting failure were theoretically derived and experimentally verified.