Elastic analysis of pin joints in plates under some combined pin and plate loads

Joints are primary sources of weakness in structures. Pin joints are very common and are used where periodic disassembly of components is needed. A circular pin in a circular hole in an infinitely large plate is an abstraction of such a pin joint. A two-dimensional plane-stress analysis of such a configuration is carried out, here, subjected to pin-bearing and/or biaxial-plate loading. The pin is assumed to be rigid compared to the plate material. For pin load the reactive stresses at the edges of the infinite plate tend to zero though their integral over the external boundary equals to the pin load. The pin-hole interface is unbonded and so beyond some load levels the plate separates from the pin and the extent of separation is a non-linear function of load level. The problem is solved by inverse technique where the extent of contact is specified and the causative loads are evaluated directly. In the situations where combined load is acting the separation-contact zone specification generally needs two parameters (angles) to be specified. The present report deals with analysing such a situation in metallic (or isotropic) plates. Numerical results are provided for parametric representation and the methodology is demonstrated.