Stochastic study on dynamic behaviour of bolted joint structure

Bolted joint structure is one of the complex types of the assembled structure that is applied in different sectors of industries. The benefit of the joining method using bolt and nut including low production cost, low maintenance and simplistic design of assembly. The prediction of dynamic behaviour of the bolted joins assembled structure is very challenging. The dynamic behaviour of the assembled structure such as bolted joined structure can be altered by the uncertainties of parameters such as material properties, structural geometry, and boundary conditions of the structure. The uncertainties that are inherited in the assembled structure can be analysed and evaluated using stochastic structural response by benchmarking the obtained results with the experimental data. In this study, a few bolted joint models are represented with RBE2, CBAR and CBEAM element connectors and initially constructed using finite element method (FEM). The initial response of the FE models with different type of element connectors in terms of natural frequencies and mode shapes are compared with experiment counterpart. The initial bolted joins assembled structure using CBEAM have shown the highest correlation response in terms of natural frequencies and mode shapes. The analysis using Stochastic Finite Element Method (SFEM) by utilising The Modified Extensible Lattice Sequence (MELS) algorithm is then used to predict stochastic responses from the initial FE model of the bolted joins structure. The result shows the adaptation of MELS algorithm on the analysis of the bolted joins assembled structure with CBEAM shows a better correlation to the experimental counterpart as higher number of samples applied to the structure.