Search Results

The development of efficient and reliable methods for the design and analysis of fastened structural connections is among the most important problems in aerospace applications because fastened structural connections are common sites of failure initiation. Numerical simulation of fastened structural connections is difficult because there are complicated interactions between the fasteners and the structural components being joined and one of the most important attributes of a fastened connection, the clearance, is a stochastic variable. This paper presents a mathematical model for frictionless shear connections and its implementation within the framework of the p-version of the finite element method.