Elastic stiffness of reverse channel joint web components under bolt tension

Reverse channel joint is a convenient method to make connection between steel beam and steel tubular column (with or without concrete infill). This paper presents analytical solutions for evaluating the elastic stiffness of reverse channel joint web component under bolt tension. The design parameters that affect the reverse channel web elastic stiffness include bolt position, edge distance, number of bolt rows, pitch between the bolts, depth of the reverse channel's flange, and type of the reverse channel. Starting from the load-deflection solution of an infinitely long plate with simply supported edges under lateral point load, this paper makes a number of simplifying assumptions to deal with the various issues of using practical reverse channel webs. These issues include finite length of reverse channel, rotational restraint from the reverse channel flanges, realistic reverse channel profile and more than one row of bolts. This paper presents validation for each simplification by comparing the analytical solutions with numerical simulation results using the general finite element software ABAQUS.Accuracy of the final formulations was checked against available experimental results, some of which were carried out by the authors. For comparison, extensive numerical simulations were carried out to cover all possible ranges of practical design parameters, which included number of bolt rows, bolt positions (pitch, gauge, end/edge distances), reverse channel type (cut from square tube with equal flange/web thickness, cut from rolled channels with thicker flange/thinner web) and reverse channel dimensions (length, web width, flange width, thickness).In all cases, the proposed analytical solution was shown to give sufficiently accurate results.