Experimental Study And Finite Element Analysis On Bonding Connections Of Steel Structures

As an important kind of connection, bonding connections have been widely used in the fields of aerospace industry, civil engineering structural strengthening, repair, etc. But bonding directly utilized in steel structures is rarely investigated before. Since the appearance of various adhesive composed of numerous polymers, especially the application of high performance adhesive composed of epoxy, the bonding connection has become possible in the field of steel structures. This paper has in-depth investigated bonding connections in steel structures by experiments and finite element analysis.First, the theoretical analysis results on existing mechanical models of the adhesive layer are summarized. Moreover, the mechanical models adopted in the paper are described in details.Secondly, the usage of the bonding connection is in-depth investigated in the form of the beam-to-column end-plate connection with column flange reinforced by adhering a steel plate. To compare the advantages and disadvantages of the new connection, whose column flange reinforced by adhering a steel plate, with the usual connection, whose column flange thickened within the scope of end-plate by welding, and adjust the parameters of the finite element model, an experiment with two groups of 6 specimens is carried out. Besides, the new connection and the usual welding connection are detailedly calculated by finite element software ABAQUS. Some useful conclusions are derived by analysis and comparison, and moreover, a formula is given for calculating the ultimate load of adhesive layer and a construction requirement is suggested.And then the structural behavior and the collapse mechanism of the new bonding connections in the lapped Z-purlins are in-depth investigated. First, an experiment is carried out to investigate the loading characteristics of lapped Z-purlins with the bonding connections or the traditional bolt connections, focusing on the bending stiffness and ultimate loading capacity. Since the influence of the unavoidable factors such as initial defect and experimental error existing in the experiment, a finite element analysis is carried out by ABAQUS to study the specimens. The reference finite element model is derived from the experiment results, and expanded into Z-purlins with double spans, to study the influence of lapped bonding connections on the loading performance of the overall purlin structure. At last, some design suggestions about the bonding connection in the cold-formed Z-purlins are advanced from the experimental and finite element results. The results show that, the bonding connection has a great improvement on its mechanical behavior compared with the traditional bolt connection. Consequently, the bonding connection can achieve the expected design requirements of continuous Z-purlins.