Investigation into the effect of interface characteristics on the energy dissipation of the bolted joints

Energy dissipation in built-up structures is produced due to microslip along the frictional interfaces. The effect of interface characteristics, namely stick stiffness and friction coefficient, on the tangential energy dissipation of the bolted joints is studied. A microslip model based on bilinear element is employed to simulate the bolted joint. It analyzes how the interface characteristic parameters affect the stick-slip transitions and hysteretic characteristics. The calculation formulation of the energy dissipation per cycle is introduced and the results are plotted on linear and log'log coordinates respectively. The paper also presents the results of the microslip model based on dry friction element. The investigation shows that the interface characteristics greatly affect the joints slip behavior and energy dissipation. There exists a cross-point between the energy dissipation curves for interfaces with different stick stiffness, which varies the nonlinearity between the applied force amplitude and the energy dissipation per cycle. Different friction coefficient results in differences of the amount of energy dissipation. The work provides references for effectively utilizing the joints energy dissipation or identifying the interface characteristic parameters.