Bolted T-stubs: A refined model for flange and bolt fracture modes

It is well known that, in order to accurately predict the behaviour of steel structures a requirement the definition of the mechanical behaviour of beam-to column joints is of primary importance. This goal can be achieved by means of the so-called component method, which, in order to obtain the whole behaviour of connections, provides to break up joints in basic components of deformability and resistance. One of the main joint components used to model bolted connections is the so-called equivalent T-stub in tension, which is normally used to predict the behaviour of bolted plates in bending starting from the behaviour of the single bolt rows. In past decades, significant research efforts have been devoted to the prediction of the behaviour of bolted T-stubs but, to date, no particular attention has been devoted to the characterization of their plastic deformation capacity. To this scope, the work presented in this paper, taking into account the existing technical literature, proposes a new theoretical model for predicting the whole behaviour up to failure of bolted T-stubs under monotonic loading conditions, including some complexities, such as the bolt/plate compatibility requirement and the bolt fracture, which are necessary to accurately evaluate the ultimate displacement. After presenting the advances of the proposed approach, a comparison between theoretical and experimental results is provided in order to verify its accuracy.