Indian Journal of Engineering & Materials Sciences

Vol. 18, August 2011, pp. 283-292

Comparison of bolted joints with two different clearance types
mran Esendemir*

&

Aye ndrc
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Sleyman Demirel University, 32260 Isparta, Turkey
Received 27 July 2010; accepted 11 April 2011
In this study, bearing strengths of bolted joints with different clearances are compared. Woven-glass-epoxy prepreg
composites are tested under two different bolt-bearing conditions. The geometry of the samples for bolted joints is suitably
varied in order to find the limit for width-to-diameter (W/d) and edge distance-to-diameter ratios (E/d), which are necessary
to avoid unsafe failure modes. Damage progression is examined using scanning electron microscope (SEM) on specimens
with mixed (bearing+net tension) mode for different percentages of their ultimate failure load. It is observed that the
clearance between the bolt and hole has an important influence on the failure load of mechanically fastened joints.
Keywords: Bolted-joints, Failure analysis, Scanning electron microscopy (SEM)
An understanding of bolted joint behaviour is
essential to the design of efficient aerospace structures
from carbon-fibre reinforced polymer materials.
Maximum joint efficiencies in composite structures
tend to be less than for metals, so poorly designed
joints detract significantly from the weight advantage
of composites over metals. In a typical manufacturing
environment, the diameter of fasteners and holes will
vary within certain allowed tolerances. The
combination of bolt and hole tolerances will result in
a range of allowable bolt-hole fits, which in
composites are generally clearance rather than
interference fits, due to concerns over damage caused
to the composite during insertion of the fastener, and
also possibly removal of the fastener during
inspections
1
. The strength and failure modes of bolted
joints have been shown to be significantly affected by
relations between geometrical parameters such as the
bolt diameter (d) bolt-hole diameter (D) laminate
thickness (t) width (W) and edge distance (E)
2-5
. Other
factors such as the stacking sequence
2,6
, clamping
moment
4-10
have been investigated and shown to be
important for the joint strength. Studies on the effects
of clearance have been performed in bolted
joints
1,3,4,11-18
. A review of the investigations that have
been made on the stress and strength analysis of
mechanically fastened joints in fibre-reinforced
plastics (FRP) was presented by Camanho and
Matthews
19
. The experimental observations of the
effects of joint geometry, ply-orientation, lay-up and
through-thickness pressure on the joint behaviour are
described briefly for both single and multi-fastener
joints. Xiao and Ishikawa
20
conducted the
experimental investigations in order to study the
strength and failure of mechanically fastened
composite joints. Their results show that the bearing
failure can be outlined as a process of compressive
damage accumulation, and can be macroscopically
divided into the following four stages: damage onset,
damage growth, local fracture and structural fracture.
An experimental investigation was carried out on a
fibreglass/aluminium (FGA) laminate in order to
characterise its behaviour under pin and bolt-bearing
conditions. Bearing tests were carried out on a
fibreglass/aluminium laminate, varying the joint
geometry and clamping pressure, in order to find the
design conditions to be fulfilled for a safe failure
mode
21
. Additionally, a review of the investigations
that have been made on the mechanics of mechanically
fastened joints in polymer-matrix composite structures
was presented by Thoppul et al.
22

In this study, bearing strengths of bolted joints with
different clearances have been compared. Two
different clearance types have been formed to
investigate the effect of the clearance in composite
bolted joints. All specimens were torqued to finger-
tight (T = 0 Nm) conditions. For each type, load-
displacement curves and bearing strengths were
obtained according to different geometrical
parameters. Furthermore, failure modes of bolted-
joint specimen with different clearance were
presented. The damage progression of specimens with
_____________
*Corresponding author (E-mail: esen@mmf.sdu.edu.tr)
INDIAN J ENG. MATER. SCI., AUGUST 2011


284
clearance was examined using scanning electron
microscope (SEM).

Bolted Joint Configuration
The geometry of composite specimen is shown in
Fig. 1. The dimensions of the specimen were chosen
as W= 10, 15, 20, 25 mm, E= 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 mm,
L= 80 mm, t= 1.45 mm. Two different clearance types
were formed, as shown in Fig. 2.
The hole diameter of the composite specimen was
5 mm for Type-I; however, the hole diameter of the
composite specimen was 5.2 mm for Type-II. For
both types, the diameter of the hole of test fixture was
5.2 mm. A metric 5 bolt was used in the experimental
study. The preload moment was obtained by finger-
tightening (see Fig. 3).
As seen in Fig. 4, there are failure modes related to
the geometry of specimen: net tension, shear-out,
cleavage and bearing
3
. Although joint failure with the
net-tension, shear-out and cleavage modes is
catastrophic and immediate, bearing failure is
progressive. For this reason, bearing failure is preferred
in applications.
Bearing stress
b
is defined by the following
equation,

max
.
=
b
P
Dt
... (1)

Where
max
P is the applied maximum load, D is the
hole diameter and t is the specimen thickness.

Experimental Procedure
The mechanical properties of woven prepreg glass-
fibre composed of eight-layer composite blanks are
given in Table 1
5
.
All tests were conducted at ambient temperature
by means of an Instron Testing Machine in Pamukkale


Fig. 2Two different clearance types


Fig. 1Geometry of the composite specimen


Fig. 3Test fixture of bolted joints
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285
University Mechanics Laboratory. The test specimens
were rigidly clamped into testing machine. They were
fixed into the fixture so that no initial bending moment
was caused. The bolt was tightened with a torque of 0
Nm to represent finger tight. The tests were run in
displacement control at a rate of 1 mm/min. Each
sample was loaded to ultimate failure. During static
tests, load-displacement response was recorded in order
to examine the failure process of joint specimens.

Results and Discussion
An experimental study on the effects of two
different bolt-hole clearances in bolt joints was
performed. Load-displacement curves of composite
bolted-joints with two different clearances were
obtained. The failure loads and the failure modes
obtained in this experimental study have been
presented in Table 2, for each types. As seen in the
Table 2, when W/d=2 is kept constant and the ratio of
E/d is changed from 1 to 5, failure modes become net
tension. For W/d=3, 4 and 5, failure modes become
net tension for only E/d=1. However, for the other
ratios of E/d, failure modes become bearing + net
tension. Failure modes obtained from experiments are
the same for Type-I and Type-II. When failure loads
are compared, failure load of the Type-I is bigger than
that of the Type-II. In both of the types, it was
observed that there are three different failure modes.
These failure modes are net tension, cleavage+net
tension and bearing+net tension as shown in Fig. 5.
Additionally; load-displacement curves have been
given according to failure modes. Figure 6 shows
load-displacement curves in different geometries for
both of the types.
For each type, bearing strengths are given in Fig. 7.
As seen in the figure, the bearing strength of joints
with Type-I is higher than that of joints with Type-II.
According to McCarthy et al.
23
, clearance was a
more significant factor in determining load distribution
than plate thickness, plate width, bolt diameter, or bolt
pitch. The results indicate that variable clearances in
multi-bolt joints significantly alter the load
distribution
11
. According to Rosales-Iriarte et al.
24
, if
bolt-hole clearance is included in the joint, the bolt-
hole contact area is reduced, hence the stress is higher
and the load carrying capacity of the joint is decreased.
The results which involved experimental studies on
bolt joints agree with findings in literature. It has been
found that bolt-hole clearances have a significant effect
on failure, therefore clearance should be taken into
consideration when designing composite joints.


Fig. 4Common failure modes (a) net tension, (b) cleavage, (c)
shear-out and (d) bearing

Table 1Mechanical properties of prepreg composite materials
5

Properties Symbols Magnitudes
Longitudinal modulus E
1
(GPa) 27.80
Transverse modulus E
2
(GPa) 27.80
Shear modulus G
12
(GPa) 4.66
Poissons ratio
12
0.16
Longitudinal tensile strength X
t
(MPa) 343
Longitudinal compressive strength X
c
(MPa) 280
Transverse tensile strength Y
t
(MPa) 343
Transverse compressive strength Y
c
(MPa) 280
Shear strength S (MPa) 94

Table 2Failure loads and failure modes for Type I and Type II

Clearance type I Clearance type II W/d E/d
Failure load
(N)
Failure
mode
Failure load
(N)
Failure
mode


2

1
2
3
4
5
920
1472
1556
1617
1667
N
N
N
N
N
794
1219
1407
1259
1243
N
N
N
N
N


3


1
2
3
4
5
1041
1694
1983
1934
2055
C-N
B-N
B-N
B-N
B-N
910
1649
1968
1839
1859
C-N
B-N
B-N
B-N
B-N


4

1
2
3
4
5
984
1760
2482
2391
2520
C-N
B-N
B-N
B-N
B-N
872
1712
1829
2133
2144
C-N
B-N
B-N
B-N
B-N


5
1
2
3
4
5
1081
2050
2560
2547
2840
C-N
B-N
B-N
B-N
B-N
927
1763
2291
2080
2595
C-N
B-N
B-N
B-N
B-N
N: Net Tension, C-N: Cleavage-Net Tension, B-N: Bearing-Net
Tension
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Fig. 5Load-displacemet curves for different failure modes in experimental study
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Fig. 6Load-displacemet curves according to different geometrical parameters for (a) clearance type-I and (b) clearance type-II
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Damage progression
To investigate the damage progression of the
bearing surface of the specimens, samples were
subjected to 80%, 95% and 100% of the ultimate
failure loads. The damage areas were observed from
the test samples under a scanning electron microscope
(SEM) for 80%, 95% and 100% values of the failure
load. Figures 8-10 show the progression of damage at
the bearing surface of the specimens. As seen in Figs
8a, 9a and 10a, while failure type becomes bearing at
80% and 95% of the failure load, it becomes bearing
and net tension at 100% ultimate failure load. From
Fig. 8b, it can be seen that the piling up occurs in the
matrix material and the cracks occur perpendicular to
the loading direction. These types of orientations
develop depending on the macro-displacements in
matrix material after cracks have occurred. The details
of the cracks are seen in Figs 8c and 8d. As shown in
Fig. 9, thin and long cracks oriented perpendicular to
the loading direction occur at some areas of the bearing
surface of the samples with 95% of the failure load.
Additionally, it can be observed that other small cracks
are either parallel or oriented at a certain angle to the
main crack at the bearing surface. Figure 9d shows that
matrix material piles up at some points, tearing off
occurs and continues easily with the continuation of
loading. As shown in Fig. 10, when the failure load is
100% in the samples, the net tension failure is observed
at each side of the hole after the bearing failure mode
has occurred. At the bearing surface of the samples
with 100% of the failure load, the propagation of crack
and accumulation of damage are bigger than that of the
other values of the failure load.

Conclusions
In this study, a detailed experimental investigation
was performed to evaluate the effect of clearance of
mechanically fastened joints on two different types.
The influence of failure loads, bearing strengths and
failure modes of bolted joints were also investigated.
Furthermore, damage progression of the sample was
examined in order to predict joint failure. The
following conclusions can be drawn from this study:

(i) Failure load and strength of the bolted joints
depend on the joint geometry (W/d and E/d).
(ii) Bearing strengths of the woven-glass epoxy
composite blanks generally increase by
increasing both E/d and W/d ratios.
(iii) When the E/d ratio is 1, net tension, which is the
weakest mode, occurs. Bearing+net tension
mode compared with the other two failure
modes has been found to have the highest
ultimate strength. Therefore, optimum values of
W/d and E/d ratios are preferred in the design.
(iv) The clearance between the bolt and hole has a
significant influence on the failure load of bolted
joints.
(v) Bearing strength of the Type-I is higher than that
of the Type-II. Bearing strength of the Type-I
increases by 35.72% according to Type-II at best
(for W/d=4 and E/d=3).
(vi) When W/d ratio is equal to or greater than 3 for
other ratios (except E/d=1) mixed failure mode
(bearing+net tension) occurs. It is known that
bearing + net tension failure mode is the best
convenient mode because of load carrying
capacity.


Fig. 7Bearing strength according to different geometrical
parameters for (a) clearance type-I and (b) clearance type-II.

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Fig. 8SEM micrograph of the bearing surface for 80% of the failure load
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Fig. 9SEM micrograph of the bearing surface for 95% of the failure load
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Fig. 10SEM micrograph of the bearing surface for 100% of the failure load
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Acknowledgments
The authors wish to express a special thank to
Izorell Firm, zmir, Turkey, for their collaboration in
producing of the woven glass-epoxy prepregs and to
Pamukkale University Mechanical Engineering
Department.

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