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Interesting Joint Stiffness Method

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ultramag21

Mechanical
Jun 5, 2010
1
So I was doing some FE work (w/ NASTRAN) to determine the stiffness in all 6 DOF of a model bolted to another model. To characterize the bolted interfaces I attached surface nodes within the bolt frustums to rigid body elements (RBE2). Then, these RBE2s were connected with a directional stiffness element (CBUSH) to model the bolt. To determine the directional stiffnesses of the CBUSHs I used a method suggested by another person with much more experience. Details below.

CBUSH Stiffness Determination:

Using Shigley's method, I found the bolt stiffness as Kb = E*At/L'. Where At was the tensile area, and L' was the effective grip length.

Then, to approximate the surrounding material stiffness, I multiplied Kb by 2. This was the joint longitudinal stiffness (2*Kb).

The joint transverse directional stiffness was found by multiplying the longitudinal joint stiffness by G/E ~ 0.4 to get a short beam in shear vs. tension stiffness.

This is a method that I had never heard of, or thought of. But because it was based on industry experience, I rolled with it. Does anybody have any comments or thoughtful input on this method?
 
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