REVIEW ARTICLE


Experimental Study and Comparative Numerical Analysis of the Mechanical Behavior of Extended End-Plate Connections with End-Plate Stiffeners



Shizhe Chen1, 2, Chao Zhou2, Zhan Wang*, 1, 2
1 State Key Laboratory of Subtropical Building Science, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China
2 School of Civil Engineering and Transportation, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China

Article Information


Identifiers and Pagination:

Year: 2015
Volume: 9
First Page: 653
Last Page: 665
Publisher Id: TOMEJ-9-653
DOI: 10.2174/1874155X01509010653

Article History:

Received Date: 17/2/2014
Revision Received Date: 21/3/2015
Acceptance Date: 9/6/2015
Electronic publication date: 16/9/2015
Collection year: 2015

© 2015 Chen et al

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the State Key Laboratory of Subtropical Architecture Science, Department of Civil Engineering and Transportation, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou; Tel: (+86)13825045880; Fax: +86-020-87113421; E-mail: wangzhan@scut.edu.cn


Abstract

To investigate the influence of end-plate stiffeners on the initial rotational stiffness of extended end-plate internal joints, an experimental program was carried out to investigate the rotational behavior of the joints. Two finite element methods (FEMs) were proposed using ABAQUS software. The stress distribution, plastic development, and deformation characteristics of extended end-plate joints were determined from a comparison of the results of experiments and numerical analyses, and a calculation method for the initial tensile stiffness of the end-plate stiffener was proposed. This investigation presented herein demonstrates that (1) the angle and thickness of the stiffener strongly influence the initial tensile stiffness of the joint; and (2) component-based FEMs can accurately reflect the entire loading process of joints in a simple and efficient manner.

Keywords: End-plate stiffener, finite element method, experimental investigation, modified component method.