Thin-Walled Structures 49 (2011) 15261533

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Thin-Walled Structures
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tws

Design of screwed steel sheeting connection at ambient and

elevated temperatures
a

Wei Lu a,n, Pentti Makel

ainen
, Jyri Outinen b, Zhongcheng Ma c
a

Department of Civil and Structural Engineering, School of Engineering, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland
Ruukki Construction Oy, Vantaa, Finland
c
Z. Ma Research and Consulting, Espoo, Finland
b

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 13 June 2011
Accepted 26 July 2011
Available online 24 August 2011

Cold-formed proled steel roof sheeting can be directly connected to the top chord of a steel roof truss
through self-tapping screws. At ambient temperatures, neither EN 1993-1-8 nor EN 1993-1-3 can be
used directly for this type of connection. Besides, no design rules are available in EN 1993-1-2 for
designing screwed connections in re. A 3D Finite Element (FE) model for a single-lap shear screwed
connection is developed using ABAQUS software. After the validation by tests, the model is used to
predict the ultimate resistance of connections at both ambient and elevated temperatures. Further, the
effects of edge and end distances on the connection resistance are investigated. Based on the analyses
results, revised design equations for predicting the connection resistance are proposed. The design
resistance is calibrated by testing and FE analyses results according to the procedure given in EN 1990
and the partial safety factor is derived.
& 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Screwed connection
Cold-formed steel sheeting
Elevated temperatures
Catenary action
Finite element modelling
Bearing resistance
Partial safety factor

1. Introduction
Cold-formed proled steel roof sheeting can be connected to the
top chord of a steel roof truss through self-tapping screws. It has
been shown from the previous researches [1,2] that axial forces can
be generated in proled steel sheeting in re. As a result of the
restraints to the thermal expansion these forces are initially
compressive. At the later stages when the catenary action starts
to develop the forces become tensile, which helps the sheeting to
survive in re by behaving as a cable hanging from the adjacent
structural members. If the large deformation of the structure is
allowed and the sheeting can survive in the stage of the large
deection, the expensive re protections can be removed or
reduced so as to improve competitiveness of the steel roong
system because of the wide covering area of the roof in this type of
building. One of the major factors affecting the behaviour of steel
sheeting in re is how the fasteners behave in re.
In certain applications, the thickness of the sheeting is less
than 1.0 mm and the thickness of the top chord is over 5 mm. The
connection design in the current EN 1993-1-3 [3] is mainly for a
core thickness of connected plate less than 4 mm, which is not
covered by EN 1993-1-8 [4]. However, when using EN 1993-1-8
to design the connection, the design formulas are valid for the
bolted joint with material grades of S235, S275, S355 and S460.

Corresponding author. Tel.: 358 9 47023781; fax: 358 9 47023758.

E-mail address: Wei.2.Lu@aalto. (W. Lu).

0263-8231/$ - see front matter & 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.tws.2011.07.014

The steel grade for the steel sheeting is normally S320 or S350.
Thus, the validity of using either EN 1993-1-3 or EN 1993-1-8 in
the connection design at room temperatures needs to be investigated. In addition, at elevated temperatures, no rules in EN
1993-1-2 [5] are available for the connection designing.
In this paper, a 3D nite element model was developed using
ABAQUS software [6] to simulate a sheeting-to-truss connection
under a static shear at both ambient and elevated temperatures.
The model considers the material nonlinearity, geometric nonlinearity and contact behaviour. The accuracy of the model is
validated by test results. The validated model is used to predict
the bearing resistance of the connection and to investigate the
effects of such parameters as the edge and end distances of
screws to the connected steel sheet on the bearing resistance of
the connection. Based on the analysis results, design formulas for
predicting the bearing resistance of the screwed connections are
proposed at both ambient and elevated temperatures. This design
resistance is calibrated by testing results and FE analyses according to the procedure given in EN 1990 [7] and the partial safety
factor is derived.

2. Single lap shear test and FE modelling

2.1. Single lap shear test
Because sheeting is normally connected to its supports with a
single connector per trough, the test arrangement with a single

W. Lu et al. / Thin-Walled Structures 49 (2011) 15261533

1527

50

Connecting bar
to test machine
Fixing
screw

30 30

Inside oven

t = 0.5 mm
d
=
5.5
m

40

Connecting bar
to test machine

t = 5 mm

Packing

40

Tested
connector

15

Packing

15

Fixing
screw

Fig. 1. (a) Test set-up and (b) test specimen.

Table 1
Materials and dimensions of screwed connections.
Parts

Materials

Ultimate strength
fu (N/mm2)

Dimensions (mm)

Thin sheet
Thick plate
Screw

S350GD Z
S355
Carbon steel

420
470
800

0.8 mm thick
5.0 mm thick
f5.5 mm of nominal
diameter with
f15 mm built-in
washer

fastener has been chosen according to ECCS recommendations [8].

However, as a result of the limited dimensions of the available
furnace, the dimensions of a specimen have been reduced in order
to t the furnace whereas trying to keep the recommended
dimensions given in ECCS recommendations (Fig. 1).
At elevated temperatures, the tests were carried out in two
steps. First, the specimen was heated to the designed temperature
by the surrounding heating chamber at a rate of 20 1C per minute.
The temperature was kept as a constant for 1020 min. Then the
specimen was loaded at a rate less than 1 mm/min using a
displacement-controlled method. According to ECCS recommendations, the maximum load is reached at a deformation of 3 mm.
However, in re case the large deformation is an alternative
mechanism to prevent the failure of the structure. Thus, the tests
were stopped when a displacement of 20 mm was reached at
room temperature and 15 mm at elevated temperatures. Two
specimens were tested for each given temperature, i.e. at 20 1C,
200 1C, 400 1C and 600 1C. The materials and dimensions for the
test specimens are given in Table 1.

washer. Because of only one integration point in the thickness

direction for each element, at least three layers of elements were
used along the thickness of thick plate and thin sheet. The mesh
densities in the two sheets in vicinity of screw connector are
rened as a result of the deformation mainly originating from this
area and the local buckling of the thinner sheet. However, in the
explicit method, computational cost is proportional to the numbers of elements and roughly inversely proportional to the
dimension of the smallest element. Thus, the dimension of the
smallest element is controlled so as to maintain the computational efciency.
Boundary conditions are dened so that the right end of the
thick plate was xed (Fig. 2), and the left end of the thin sheet can
only move along the loading direction up to 20 mm. The contact
interfaces include the ones between the thinner sheet and the
thicker plate, between the thinner sheet and the steel washer,
between the thinner sheet and the screw shank, between the
thicker plate and the screw shank, and between the thicker plate
and the screw threads. General contacts were used to model the
interactions of these contacts.
The reduction factor for the strengths and the modulus of
elasticity for both sheet steel and screw steel at elevated temperatures were taken from EN 1993-1-2 and Fig. 2(b) shows the yield
strengths for bolt and for thin sheet at elevated temperatures. To
treat the local failures in the thinner sheet in vicinity of screw
connector caused by the high bearing stresses, the progressive
damage failure of a material model was included in the analysis.
From the literatures [9,10], it is reasonable to assume that the
damage initiation started when an equivalent plastic strain reached
at a value of 0.45 and a material failed when the equivalent plastic
strain reached at a value of 0.5 for thin sheet steel.
2.3. Validation of FE model

2.2. FE modelling
Fig. 2(a) shows the FE assembly of a single lap shear screw
connection and the connection details. The main function of
screw threads in the FE model is to prevent the screw from being
moved along its axial direction, thus, only three threads are
modelled in order to improve computational efciency. Commercial FE software, ABAQUS/Explicit (Version 6.9.1), was used as an
analysis tool. Three dimensional eight-node solid elements with
reduced integration point (C3D8R) were chosen for modelling the
thick plate, the thin sheet, the screw, the screw threads and the

Two failure modes were observed from tests as shown in

Fig. 3(a): the bearing failure of the thinner plate below 200 1C and
the shear failure of the screw connector at 400 1C and 600 1C.
Fig. 3(b) shows the failure modes from FE modelling both at 20 1C
and 400 1C. It can be seen that the FE model predicted the failure
modes well.
Fig. 4(a) and (b) shows the comparisons of loaddeection
curves from tests and those from FE analyses at both 20 1C and
400 1C, respectively. It can be seen that at 20 1C, both the shape of
the curve and the maximum values of the forces from the FE

1528

W. Lu et al. / Thin-Walled Structures 49 (2011) 15261533

Screw head
Screw washer
Thread
Thin sheet
Thick sheet

Loading

Displacement
Output
Fixed edges
Fig. 2. (a) FE model of single lap screwed sheeting connection in shear (b) yield strength of bolt and thin sheet steel in re in this work.

20 C

200 C

400 C

600 C

20 C

400 C

Fig. 3. Failure modes from (a) tests and (b) FE modelling.

Fig. 4. Comparisons of loaddisplacement curves from FE modelling to test results at (a) 20 1C and (b) 400 1C.

analyses correlate well with those from tests. At 400 1C, two
curves were plotted from FE analyses: in one curve it is assumed
that no failure occurred in the connectors (FEM_No) and in the
other curve failure occurred in the connectors (FEM). It can be
seen that when the connector failure is included in the model,
the shape of the loaddisplacement curve ts well with that from
the test. However, because the nominal material properties at
elevated temperatures for bolt were used, the value of the
maximum load from the FE analysis is about 15% less than that
from tests. In addition, when the bearing resistance of a connection is of interest, the failure of the connector can be excluded. It
can be seen that the model without considering the connector
failure showed a same level of the maximum load as that from
test results. Therefore, it can be concluded that these FE models
can be used for further analyses.
2.4. Force components in bearing resistance
The force, FT, transmitted from the thin sheet through the
connector to the thick plate is divided into four components as
shown in Fig. 5: FBF, ShankThin is the bearing force between the
screw shank and the thin sheet; FFF, WahserThin is the friction force

FBF.WasherSide

FBF.ShankThin

FT

FFF.WasherThin

FFF.ThickThin
Fig. 5. Load components in bearing/tearing failure.

between the washer and the thin sheet; FFF, ThickThin is the friction
force between the thick plate and the thin sheet; and FBF, WasherSide
is the bearing force between the washer side and the thin sheet
after a curling of the thin sheet.
The contribution of each component to the load bearing
resistance at both 20 1C and 400 1C are shown in Fig. 6(a) and
(b), respectively. Besides the contributions from these force
components, Fig. 6(a) and (b) also shows the curves corresponding to the sum of the four force components mentioned above
(represented by SumF-thin) and the force values output at the
loaded end of the thin sheet (LD-thin).

W. Lu et al. / Thin-Walled Structures 49 (2011) 15261533

1529

Fig. 6. Contributions of force components to bearing loads at (a) 20 1C and (b) 400 1C.

When the bearing force between the screw shank and the thin
sheet (BF-shankThin) is compared with the force transferred at
the loaded end of the thin sheet at 20 1C, it can be seen that only
40% of the load is transferred through the direct bearing of the
screw shank to the thin sheet. When the displacement is lower
than 3 mm, the frictional forces between the screw washer and
the thin sheet (FF-WSThin), and the ones between the thick plate
and the thin sheet (FF-ThickThin) contribute about 30%, respectively, to the loading transmission. A very small part of the
contribution is from the bearing forces between the washer
side and the thin sheet caused by the curling of the thinner sheet
(BF-WSSide). However, when the displacement becomes larger,
the contribution from the direct bearing of the washer side to the
thin sheet to the total load transmission grows especially after the
bearing and tearing failure of the thin sheet. The same phenomena were observed at 400 1C.
It can be seen that the maximum value of the direct bearing of
the screw shank to the thin sheet reached displacement of 3 mm
both at room temperature and in re. Thus, it is reasonable to take
the maximum load value, which is less than or equal to a
displacement of 3 mm, as the maximum load of the current
connection at both ambient and elevated temperatures for further
analyses.

3. Design rules for predicting connection resistance

3.1. Current design formulas for bolt in EN 1993-1-8
The resistance against a bearing failure according to EN 19931-8 for the connection connected by one bolt is given by
Fb:Rd k1 ad fu dt=gM2
where ad and k1 are dened as follows:


f
ad min ab , ub ,1
fu

ab

e1
for end bolt
3d0



e2
k1 min 2:8 1:7,2:5
d0

where Fb,Rd is the bearing resistance under shear loads; fu is the

ultimate tensile strength of connected plates; fub is the ultimate
strength of a bolt; t is the thickness of the connected plate; d is
the diameter of a bolt; d0 is the diameter of a connection hole (for
a screwed connection d0 d); Anet is the net cross-sectional area of
connected plates; e1 is the end distance; e2 is the edge distance;
and gM2 is the partial safety factor for connectors.

3.2. Effects of end distance and edge distance on connection

resistance
The effects of the e1 and the e2 on the load resistance of a
connection are included in the parameters ad and k1, respectively.
If the value of the e1 is too small, then the so called shear-out
failure of the connecting plate will occur (Fig. 7(a)). The end
distance required to prevent the shear-out failure can be estimated by equating the maximum force transmitting by the bolt to
the force corresponding to the shear failure of the plate material
along the shear-out failure path. The lower bound of the e1/d0
ratio has been given by Kulak et al. [11] as
e1
f
0:715 ub 0:5
d0
fu

This equation relates the ratio of e1/d0 to the bearing ratio of

fub/fu, where fub and fu are the ultimate tensile strength of the bolt
and the steel, respectively. It has been shown by Kulak et al. [11]
that when the ratio of fub/fu is larger than 3.5, i.e. fub/fu 43.5 or the
ratio of e1/d0 is larger than 3, i.e. e1/d0 43, the failure of the
connection is bearing failure of the connecting plate (Fig. 7(b));
when the ratio of fub/fu is between 1 and 3.5, i.e. 1rfub/fu r3.5 or
the ratio of e1/d0 is between 1.2 and 3, i.e. 1.2re1/d0 r3, the
failure of the connection is the shear-out failure of the connecting
plate. The minimum end distance in EN 1993-1-8 is set to
e1 1.2d0, which is corresponding to fub/fu 1. It implies that if
this condition is not satised, the corresponding failure is the
bearing failure of bolt as shown in Fig. 7(c).
At elevated temperatures, the bearing ratio can be dened as
the ratio of fub.y/fu.y, where fub.y and fu.y are the ultimate tensile
strength of the bolt and the steel at elevated temperatures,
respectively. According to Eq. (5) and the reduction factors for
material strengths given in EN 1993-1-2, the variations of the
ratio of e1/d with the bearing ratio of fub/fu at elevated temperatures are shown in Fig. 8.
At 400 1C, when the bearing ratio of fub.y/fu.y is equal to 1, the
ratio of e1/d is equal to 1.4, which is higher than 1.2, i.e. the
minimum end distance at room temperature. Thus, at elevated
temperatures, the minimum end distance can be set to 1.4d.
Because of the degradation of material strength at elevated
temperatures, the connection can be considered as steel plates
with lower grade materials being connected with a lower grade of
connector at elevated temperatures. Therefore, it can be assumed
that the condition, e1/d 3, can still be used for distinguishing the
bearing failure to the shear out failure at elevated temperatures.
This assumption is further veried by the FE analyses.
Parametric analyses were conducted to investigate the effects
of the end distance e1 and the edge distance e2 on the connection
resistance at both room and elevated temperatures. Table 2 lists
the case collections for the FE analyses when the possible variations of the end distance, the edge distance and the temperatures

1530

W. Lu et al. / Thin-Walled Structures 49 (2011) 15261533

Fig. 7. Effects of e1 on failure modes (a) plate shear out (b) plate bearing and (c) bolt bearing [12].

Fig. 8. Effects of fub/fu on e1/d at elevated temperatures.

Fig. 10. Effects of e1/d on bearing resistance at both room and elevated
temperatures.
Table 2
Case collections (50 cases) for FE analyses.
Single screw with f4.55 mm

T20 1C

T 200 1C

T 400 1C

T600 1C

End distance e1 (e2 4.55d)

1.5d
2.0d
2.5d
3.0d
3.5d
5.5d

x
x
x
x
x
x

x
x
x
x
x
x

x
x
x
x
x
x

Edge distance e2 (e1 5.5d)

1.0d
1.25d
1.50d
1.75d
2.00d
2.50d
3.00d
4.55d

x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x

x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x

x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x

x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x

x: Represents the cases that FE analyses have been performed; represents the
cases that analyses have not been performed.

1.5d

2.5d

3.5d

5.5d

Fig. 9. Effects of e1 on failure modes at 400 1C.

are considered. Fig. 9 shows that at 400 1C when the end distance
e1 was increased from 1.5d to 5.5d, the failure modes were
transformed from the shear-out failure to the bearing failure of
the thinner plate. The similar failure modes were observed at the
other elevated temperatures as well.
Fig. 10 shows the variation of the bearing resistance of the
connection (FR) with a increasing of ratio of e1/d at elevated
temperatures. The results are compared with those calculated at

ambient temperatures based on EN 1993-1-8. When the ratio of

e1/d is between 1.5 and 3, i.e. 1.5oe1/dr3, the same linear
variations as in EN 1993-1-8 were observed for the current
connection at both room and at elevated temperatures. In EN
1993-1-8, the bearing resistance of the connection is reduced by a
factor of e1/3d to consider the shear-out failure of the connecting
plate. Therefore, the same reduction factor of e1/3d can be used
here to take the shear-out failure into account in the calculation
of the design bearing resistance both at room temperature and
in re.
Using the similar idea, the effects of the edge distance e2 on
the bearing resistance of the screwed connection at both ambient
and elevated temperatures are investigated. Fig. 11 shows that
two types of failure modes are observed when the edge distance
is varied from 1.0d to 2.5d at 400 1C: the net section tension
failure at the thin sheet, which is characterized by the necking
across the width and the fracture of the sheet; and the bearing
failure of the thin sheet. The similar modes are observed for other
temperatures as well.
Fig. 12 shows variations of the load resistance of connection
(FR) with the increasing of ratio of e2/d at elevated temperatures.
The net section tension resistance increases linearly when e2 is
varied from 1.0d to 2.0d. Over 2.0d, the failure mode of the
connection is transformed to the bearing failure of the thin sheet.
The bearing resistance ratio is around 3 when the edge distance
ratio is equal to 2. According to EN 1993-1-8 (Fig. 10), the
maximum bearing resistance ratio is 2.5. Therefore, a factor of
2.5 given in EN 1993-1-8 remains valid for the screwed connection taking both effects of the e1 and the e2 into account.
In addition, in EN 1993-1-8 the linear variation of the net
section tension resistance to the edge distance e2 is dened by a
factor of k1 2.8  e2/d 1 with 1.0 re2/d o1.5. Accordingly, the
linear relation is proposed as a similar factor of k1 2e2/d  1 with
1.0re2/d o1.75 for the screwed connection at both ambient and
elevated temperatures when the bearing resistance ratio remains
as 2.5. Besides, the allowed minimum edge distance e2 is dened
as 1.4d, which is the same as the end distance e1.

W. Lu et al. / Thin-Walled Structures 49 (2011) 15261533

1.0d

1.5d

1.75d

2.0d

1531

2.5d

Fig. 11. Effects of e2 on failure modes at 400 1C.

Fig. 12. (a) Effects of e2/d on bearing resistance at both room and elevated temperatures and (b) proposed equation for k1.

3.3. Proposed design formula

function is assumed, the number of tests is limited to a smaller

value of n, the characteristic resistance rk, can be obtained from:

Based on the parametric analyses using the validated FE

models, the following design formulas are proposed in the
calculations of the bearing resistance of a screwed connection at
both ambient and elevated temperatures:

rk brt X m expk1 art Qrt kn ad Qd 0:5Q 2

Fb:y:Rd k1 ad:y fu:y dt=gM:fi

where ad.y and k1 are dened as follows:


f
ad:y min ab:y , ub:y ,1
fu:y

e1
for end bolt
3d0



e2
k1 min 2 1; 2:5
d0

ab:y

in which fu.y is the ultimate tensile strength of the steel at

elevated temperature y; fub.y is the ultimate tensile strength of
the screw at elevated temperatures; d is the nominal diameter of
the screw connector; t is the thickness of the thin sheet; e1 is the
end distance; and e2 is the edge distance.

4. Statistical calibration of design resistance

4.1. Calibration of partial safety factor
Two methods are provided in EN 1990 [7] for estimating the
design resistance: the rst one is to assess a characteristic value
by applying a partial safety factor; the second one is to directly
determine the design value from test results. Accordingly, the
partial safety factor, which in this research is for the design
resistance of a screwed connection in re, i.e. gnM. can be
determined as:

gnM:fi

rk
rd

10

where rk and rd are the characteristic and the design resistance,

respectively. When a log-normal distribution for the resistance

11

Similarly, the design resistance rd can be obtained from:

rd brt X m expkd:1 art Qrt kd:n ad Qd 0:5Q 2

12

where b is the Least Squares best t to the slope given by

P
P
b rert/ r2t ; re is the experimental resistance value; rt is the
design resistance function; rt(X m ) is the design resistance calculated with the mean values of design variables X m ; Qd is the
standard deviation of the model for deriving the design resistance
function when the design resistance function is log-normal
distribution; Qrt is the sum of standard deviations of the independent design variables that all follow log-normal distributions;
Q is the combinations of Qd and Qrt; ad and art are the weighting
factors dened as Qd/Q and Qrt/Q, respectively; kn and kN are the
characteristic fractile (5%) factors when the number of test
specimens is limited and innite, respectively; kd.n and kd.N are
the design characteristic fractile factors when the number of test
specimens is limited and innite, respectively.
The calibration starts from establishing a theoretical resistance
function rt. In this analysis, Eq. (6) is chosen. The independent
variables in the design function include: the end distance e1, the
edge distance e2, the ultimate tensile strength of bolt at elevated
temperatures fub.y, and the ultimate tensile strength of steel at
elevated temperatures fu.y.
The design resistance was calculated using Eq. (6) for altogether 56 samples: for each case from FE analyses (Table 2) and
for cases from testing. These values are plotted against the
corresponding bearing resistance from FE analyses or test re as
shown in Fig. 13. The coefcient of correlation r is equal to 0.94
and the slope of the least squares regression line, b, is derived as
1.38, which shows that the proposed design equations describe
the connection resistance well.
Because of the good correlations between the design resistance
function rt and the test resistance re, the deviations in prediction
of the design resistance function can be determined from the
tests. These deviations were combined with deviations of other
variables in the resistance function, which includes the material

1532

W. Lu et al. / Thin-Walled Structures 49 (2011) 15261533

Fig. 13. Comparisons of design resistance to FE analyses and testing results.

Fig. 14. Sensitivity of connection resistance ratio to e1/d.
Table 3
Summary of statistical analysis results.
Number of FE or tests

kn

kN

kn.d

kd.N

Vd

Vrt

Vr

gnM.

56

1.67

1.64

3.27

3.04

0.17

0.12

0.21

1.38

strength and the geometrical properties. The coefcient of variation (COV) for geometric properties is taken as 5% and for material
strength of both bolts and steel as 5% and 15%, respectively [13].
In this analysis, a value of 7% is used.
The calculated values of the COVs for the evaluation errors (d),
Vd, for the combined COV of the design variables, Vrt, for the
combined COV of the evaluation errors and the design variables,
Vr, are shown in Table 3. The values of kn, kN, kn.d, and kd.N, which
are used in Eqs. (11) and (12) are also listed in Table 3. The values
of kn and kn.d are calculated by the approximation functions
as [14]:
kn

n
,
0:95 0:614n

kn:d

n
0:986 0:323n

Fig. 15. Sensitivity of connection resistance ratio to e2/d.

14

with the assumption of COV being unknown. When the numbers

of samples are innite, the characteristic fractile (5%) factor, kN, is
1.64. The design fractile factor kd.N equals to the product of aR  b
accessed at 0.8  3.83.04 as commonly accepted to obtain the
design value rd of the resistance, in which b is target reliability
with value of 3.8 for ultimate limit state design of structural
member with reliability class 2 (RC2); and aR is the sensitivity
factor or weighing factor for the resistance with a value of 0.8.
Then the partial safety factor gnM. can be calculated as:

gnM:fi

rk
expk1 art Qrt kn ad Qd 0:5Q 2
1:38

rd
expkd:1 art Qrt kd:n ad Qd 0:5Q 2

15

Accordingly, the design Eq. (6) can be rewritten as:

Fb:y:Rd k1 ad:y fu:y dt=1:38

16

If the partial safety factor (gM.) given in EN 1993-1-2 for re,

which is also called as the box value depending on the failure
types, is kept, a factor with a value of 0.72 should be included in
Eq. (6), i.e.
Fb:y:Rd 0:72k1 ad:y fu:y dt=gM:fi

17

with gM. 1.00 and other parameters are as dened previously.

4.2. Sensitivity analysis of design resistance
Figs. 1416 illustrate how the ratio of connection resistance,
Rsimu/Rprop, which is dened as the ratio of the resistance
calculated from FE analysis to the resistance calculated from
Eq. (6), is varied with three key parameters: the end distance,

Fig. 16. Sensitivity of connection resistance ratio to temperatures. (a) e1/d is

varied from 1.5 to 5.5; and (b) e2/d is varied from 1 to 4.55.

W. Lu et al. / Thin-Walled Structures 49 (2011) 15261533

the edge distance and the temperatures. It can be seen that the
ratio of connection resistance fall between 1.3 and 2.4.

5. Conclusions and future researches

The analyses show good correlations between the calculations
and test results. The studies indicate that at ambient temperature
when the screwed connection presented in this research is
designed according to EN 1993-1-8, a reduction factor of 2.5 for
considering the shear-out failure can be kept. However, revised
design equations are proposed when the ratio of the edge
distance to the diameter is in the range of 1.001.75, i.e.
1.00r e2/d o1.75. Furthermore, the design equations were
extended for the same type of connections taking the temperature
effects into account. The partial safety factor was derived in
accordance with EN 1990.
The design equations proposed in this paper are currently for
the connection with a single screw or with multiple screws
having large enough pitch distance without signicant interactions among the connectors. Future researches on multiple connectors with interactions shall be carried out. The actual
temperatures at supports around connections and their effects
on the total resistance of the structure are of great interests for a
realistic design. In addition, some tests with multiple screws are
planned to verify the analyses.

Acknowledgements
This research has been nancially supported by Rautaruukki
Oyj. Mr. Reijo Lindgren from CSCIT Centre for Science Ltd.,

1533

Finland has helped to use ABAQUS. The authors gratefully

acknowledge for the supports.

References
[1] Sokol Z, Wald F. Structural integrity of corrugated sheets exposed to re. In:
Dubina D, Ungureanu V, editors. Steela new and traditional material for
building. London: Taylor & Francis Group; 2006. p. 5616.

[2] Lu W, Makel
ainen
P, Outinen J. Numerical simulation of catenary action in
cold-formed steel sheeting in re. In: Proceedings of the Fifth International
Conference on Thin-Walled Structures, Brisbane, Australia, June 1820; 2008;
pp. 71320.
[3] EN 1993-1-3, Eurocode 3. Design of steel structures. Part 13: General rules.
Supplementary rules for cold-formed members and sheeting; 2006.
[4] EN 1993-1-8, Eurocode 3. Design of steel structures. Part 18: Design of
joints; 2005.
[5] EN 1993-1-2, Eurocode 3. Design of steel structures. Part 1-2: General rules.
Structural re design; 2005.
[6] ABAQUS on-line documentations, version 6.9.1.
[7] EN 1990, Eurocode. Basis of Structural Design; 2002.
[8] ECCS-TC7.10 ECCS Publication 124, the Testing of Connections with Mechanical Fasteners in Steel Sheeting and Sections; 2008.
[9] Shanley FR. Strength of Materials. McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.; 1957.
[10] Fan L, Rondal J, Cescotto S. Finite element modelling of single lap screw
connections in steel sheeting under static shear. Thin-Walled Structures
1997;27(2):16585.
[11] Kulak GL, Fisher JW, Struik JHA. Guide to Design Criteria for Bolted and
Riveted Joints. American Institute of Steel Construction, Inc; 2001.
[12] Rai DC. Steel Connections -I Bolts. /http://www.scribd.com/doc/38864603/
Bolted-Connections-BearingS.
[13] Sanjayan JG. Reliability Analysis to Verify the Currently used Partial Safety
Factors in Bridge Design: A Case Study using Baandee Lakes Bridge No. 1049,
/http://www.bridgeforum.org/les/pub/2004/austroads5/072_Sanjayan_
Candy%20Austroads04.pdfS, 2006.
[14] Kovse I. Design assisted by testing. In: Leonardo da Vinci Pilot Project CS/02/
B/F/PP-134007: Development of skills facilitating implementation of Eurocodes: Handbook 2 Reliability backgrounds; 2005.