Structural Engineering & Statics
where the load goes
Concept

Connection design — where it appears

The sizing of the region where two members meet, in which none of the assumptions member theory rests on hold. Plane sections and Saint-Venant's principle both exclude the disturbed region, so the analysis is an equilibrium model of a stress field rather than a check on a section.

Named by 2 essays across one field — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.

800 kN1.091.010.960.940.940.961.011.09an equal share490 mm = 24.5 dworst bolt 109 kN against a nominal 100 kN

The bolts that do not share

Every bolted connection in this collection has divided a force by a number of bolts. That is right for a short joint and wrong for a long one, and the reason has nothing to do with the bolts — it is that the plates they join are elastic, and stretch by different amounts at different points along the lap.

connections · long joint a12.12 kNb12.12 kNc5.02 kNd6.86 kNe6.86 kNf9.61 kNgoverning: mode c · 5.02 kN per shear plane

The smallest of six failures

Everything else in this collection that fails does so in one way at a time. A dowel through timber does not — the wood can crush while the steel stays straight, or one plastic hinge can form in it, or two — and the capacity is the smallest of the six, which is the kinematic theorem of plasticity applied to a joint rather than to a frame.

connections · dowel yield

Named alongside it

The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.

BearingDuctilityFree bodyAnisotropyBolt groupBondBound theoremsCollapse loadCompatibilityDecay lengthDowel yieldEmbedment strength

All concepts