A Comparison of 1D/0D And 3D Representations of Bolted Joints on Finite Element Models

The work developed on this paper aims to compare different methods to evaluate bolted joints using finite element models. It will cover the theoretical background as well as the tools developed to improve the model creation process. The tools described on this paper comprises of scripts to automatically recognize holes on solid and shell meshes and create bolt connections as solid or 1D/0D elements, accordingly to the user needs. The solid bolt models are created together with all the information needed for the creation of the solver input deck and also the measuring surfaces used on post-processing evaluation. The reduction in modelling set up time increases with the number of bolted joints, being extremely efficient in large assembly models.

This paper will also cover the method to evaluate the output from those bolted joints. This will include a study on fatigue as well as the contact formulations used on the solver algorithms. The non-linearities from those contacts can have a great impact on the processing time and one of the main studies on this paper will be to evaluate how simplified 1D/0D joints compare with the more robust 3D representation. A model with different bolted joints was created and at first the processing time between the two methods was compared. Afterwards, the fatigue results from the simplified joints was compared to the 3D ones to guarantee that the benefits on processing time wont’ be compromised by a lack of accuracy on the final results.