Response surface reconciliation method of bolted joints structure

¹ Faculty of Mechanical Engineering,Universiti Teknologi Mara, 40450 Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia
² Structural Dynamics Analysis Validation, Universiti Teknologi Mara, 40450 Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia

^* Corresponding author: mayunus@salam.uitm.edu.my

Abstract

Structural joining methods such as bolted joints are commonly used for the assembly of structural components due to their simplicity and easy maintenance. Understandably, the dynamic characteristic of bolted joined structure is mainly influenced by the properties of their joints such as preload on the bolts and joints stiffness which alter the measured dynamics response of the structure. Therefore, the need to include the local effect of the bolted joints into the numerical model of the bolted joined structure is vitally important in order to represent the model accurately. In this paper, a few types of connector elements that can be used to represent the bolted joints such as CBAR, CBEAM and CELAS have been investigated numerically and experimentally. The initial numerical results of these element connectors are compared with the experimental results in term of natural frequencies and mode shapes. The comparative evaluation of numerical and the experimental data are performed in order to provide some insights of inaccuracies in the numerical model due to invalid assumption in the numerical modelling such as geometry, material properties, and boundary conditions. The discrepancies between both results (numerical and experimental data) are then corrected using the response surface reconciliation method (RSRM) through which the finite element model is altered in order to provide closer agreement with the measured data so that it can be used for subsequence analysis.