Bolted connection

[transall]

Hello,

First, thank you for this website which is a very useful help for engineers!

I'am trying to perform an analysis for a plate with two holes at each end for bolt. This plate has to overcome a force at on end. I used SHELL41 element.
I would like to know how to define the bolted connection. I have tried to apply 0 degree of freedom on one half of the holes, but the equivalent stress doesn't converge for each mesh refinement.
Could give me some solutions to represen the bolted connection?

Thank you for your help,

Regards,

Mickaël

 

[Struct71]

You could try using BEAM44 elements with an ALPHA defined and cool them down to model your pretension. You may need to iterate the temperature to get to the required pretention. As you probably use contacts between the plates you may need several iterations. Perfect for a loop written in APDL.