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by Gnther Valtinat, Ingo Hadrych and Holger Huhn, Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg/Germany
ABSTRACT The paper contains results on the problem: How can the fatigue resistance of riveted or bolted steel construction members under repeated loads be improved. The main idea is to develop a preload rectangular to the surface of the members by means of a preloaded bolt to protect the area around the hole. The results can be used for strengthening of old railway bridges and of masts and towers under wind loads constructed from galvanized steel members with punched holes. 1. INTRODUCTION We have in Germany many old railway bridges sometimes more than 100 years old. A lot of them is still in use and many years ago the problems came up how their today resistance against repeated loads is. These old bridges are mainly riveted. From many tests in the thirties we know, that steel members with holes or with riveted connections have a considerable drop down in fatigue behaviour under repeated loading.
4 hs-bolts 16 mm
net section 83 %
Figure 1: Fatigue resistance of pure and mixed riveted and bolted connections
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Figure 2:
Stress distribution in net sections left: net section with a rivet center: net section in a high strength friction grip connection right: net section in a high strength friction grip connection after slip
In the fifties and sixties the high strength friction grip connections with preloaded bolts have been developed and tests have shown that the fatigue behaviour of members with these connections is very much better than that one with rivets. The increase in capacity which means in stress range or load cycles N was so immense that sometimes the fatigue behaviour of plain bars could be reached (figure 1). The reason for that increase was assumed to be the high pressure under the washers of the bolts around the hole. This high pressure gives a certain protection of the hole area, so that the stress distribution in the net section became much more favourable than for example with fitted bolts without preload (figure 2). From this knowledge we started an investigation what advantage the preload in a hot driven rivet can have because after the rivet is driven it cools down, the material wants to shrink which is not possible and thus produces a preload of a certain amount. When old bridges were taken down for renewing we asked for test pieces with riveted connections to find out which preload such a rivet has. The procedure was to plant a strain gage in a deep hole in the center of the rivet, to machine the rivet head off and to press the rivet out of the hole. By this procedure the rivet under tension could freely shrink and from the measurement of the contraction we could evaluate the preload in the rivet. Test pieces of that old material with old drilled holes got installed high strength bolts which were tightened up to that preload which we measured in the rivets. Hereafter we did fatigue tests. All test pieces had a certain artificial crack starting from the hole wall into the net section (see figure 3). We wanted to know the speed of the crack propagation in connections with non preloaded bolts and in connections with bolts with a preload up to that one of the rivets. We have found that the number of cycles between the two increased up to 4 times to 7 times as much under a certain relatively low preload (see figure 4). From these results we know that connections with hot driven rivets have a much higher fatigue resistance than equivalent test pieces with normal bolts show. The life time of old riveted bridges can be prolonged by this idea up to 2 times or 3 times. That gave the railway authorities enough time for planning a new bridge or for a correction of the railway line with new bridges [1].
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bar with a hole, FV = 0 kN, = 180 N/mm bar with a hole, FV = 0 kN, = 153 N/mm bar with a hole, FV = 70 kN, = 180 N/mm bar with a hole, FV = 45 kN, = 153 N/mm
load cycles N
Figure 4: Reduction of the crack propagation speed in the net section of a bar with a hole due to the preload of the high strength bolt
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2. TESTS, TEST PROCEDURE AND TEST RESULTS In figure 5 the test specimen for a steel bar with a hole and an artificial initial crack tip in the direction of the net section is shown. The high strength bolt with the 2 washers and nut were fixed up to certain preload. The washers covered a certain area around the hole and brought a certain pressure due to preload in. These test pieces were tested by fatigue loading and for us it was important to see the crack propagation. The method to make that visible was to bring in stress blocks with high and with low stress ranges. The stress blocks with the low stress ranges produce a marking line on the rupture surface which is shown by the thin dark lines in figure 6. The bright areas represent the stress block with the high stress range and all the same number of cycles. We can see that the stress propagation is nearly equal within a certain length of the crack but it speeds up towards the crack comes through [2]. The literature gives a lot of information about the stress distribution in a net section of a bar with a hole or with a crack. But we did not find a stress distribution in such a member which is influenced by a pressure under the washer across the thickness of the member coming from the preload of a high strength bolt. We did computer simulations for this special stress situation (see figure 7). In order not to do a finite element calculation every time we looked in the literature for papers with a simpler and faster method to find the stress distribution in a crack starting from a hole wall. We found the investigation by Grandt and Kullgren [3] which has the following basis (see figure 8):
oscillating load
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stress
Figure 6: Crack length measurement
markingload block