Bolt connection behaviour of the cold-formed steel joint

This paper presents an experimental study of bolt connection behaviour of the cold-formed steel joint. A 5-mm bolt was used to combine two channel sections. The size of channel section was 75 mm height, 35 mm width and 0.75 mm thickness. Tension test was conducted to obtain material characteristics of the channel section. Two type of connections were observed: Connection Type-1 that back-to-back channel sections were joined on their web directly, and Connection Type-2 that two channel sections were joined on their flanges through a same-size channel connector. The specimen was pulled by an increasing monotonically load. It was found that ultimate condition of the joint occurred when the bolt was split due to shear failure and the bolt was rotated because the hole size increased; these two failure modes are covered in the Indonesian and Australian/New Zealand cold-formed steel codes. The ultimate loads from the test were compared to analytical calculations using the formulae provided in the codes. The analytical calculation predicted the resistances conservatively within the range of 4 – 22 %.