A Numerical Approach for Developing a Bearing-Bypass Design Criterion for Sizing Bolted Joints

Bolted joints are widely used in composite aircraft structures, for their assembly. The appropriate bolted joint configuration (hole/bolt diameter, pitch, etc.) is carefully selected during the detail design phase, where high fidelity numerical models are required with substantial computational cost and time. This work presents a design criterion, which allows the selection of the bolted joint configuration during the preliminary design phase with less computational time. The developed design criterion is based on a fully parametric finite element (FE) model, built in ANSYS V19 (Canonsburg, PA, USA), of a bolted joint with progressive damage modelling (PDM) capabilities, so that the failure of the joint can be predicted. From the numerical analyses, the bearing load and the load that bypasses the hole are calculated, up to failure, for a variety of joint configurations and loading conditions. The results of each analysis are used for plotting the failure envelope for the investigated bolted-joint configuration. Consequently, a design criterion is generated for the bolted joint. The availability of these failure envelopes, as design criterion, permit the appropriate selection of the bolted-joint configuration in an earlier design phase saving valuable time and computational cost.