Experimental studies on behaviour of bolted ball-cylinder joints under axial force

Due to excellent advantages such as better illuminative effects, considerable material savings and ease and rapidness of construction, the bolted ball-cylinder joint which is a new type joint system has been proposed in space truss structures. In order to reveal more information and understanding on the behaviour of bolted ball-cylinder joints, full-scale experiments on eight bolted ball-cylinder joint specimens were conducted. Five joint specimens were subjected to axial compressive force, while another three joint specimens were subjected to axial tensile force. The parameters investigated herein were the outside diameter of hollow cylinders, the height of hollow cylinders, the thickness of hollow cylinders, ribbed stiffener and axial force. These joint specimens were collapsed by excessive deformation of hollow cylinders, punching damage of hollow cylinders, evulsion of bolts, and weld cracking. The strain distributions on the hollow cylinder opening were mainly controlled by bending moments. To improve the ultimate bearing capacity and axial stiffness of bolted ball-cylinder joints, two effective measures were developed: (1) the thickness of the hollow cylinder needed to be thicker; (2) the ribbed stiffener should be adopted. In addition, the axial stiffness of bolted ball-cylinder joints exhibited significant non-linear characteristics.