ABSTRACT
Bolted joints are widely used in engineering structures. Lot of contact occurs and this has a big influence on the structure’s stiffness. To make sure that the structure has enough stiffness and minimum mass, designers should be clear about the law on how the parameters impact structure stiffness. In this work, we design a typical bolted joint structure and model it with three-dimensional elements. And then, we simplify it according to static results. The simplified model could be computed efficiently and the error could be controlled in an ideal range. Finally, a parameterized model of the bolted joint structure is built based on the simplified model and the law on how parameters impact structure stiffness is found. The results show that the tensile stiffness of the structure is non-linear and the compression stiffness, which is obviously less than the tensile stiffness, is linear.
