Experimental and numerical investigation of bolted steel endplate with bonded sleeve end connections for pultruded GFRP circular tubular hollow beams

The paper presents an experimental and numerical investigation of bolted steel endplates with bonded sleeve connections developed for connecting pultruded glass fibre-reinforced polymer (GFRP) circular tubular beams. The moment-rotational responses were investigated in detail in terms of initial rotational stiffness, moment capacity, and rotation capacity for all the connections. The effect of endplate thickness and bonded sleeve length was also investigated. Predominant failure modes include bending and yielding of thinner endplates, while thicker endplates with low bonded sleeve lengths exhibit splitting failure in the bonded GFRP beam region. Available design codes for steel joints were used to classify the developed connections in terms of rigidity and strength. The failure modes from the finite element models were well matched by the experimental observations, which include the deformation of the endplate and the cohesive failure within the bonded sleeve region with the GFRP beam.

Automated summary

This paper presents an experimental and numerical investigation on bolted steel endplates with bonded sleeve connections for connecting pultruded GFRP circular tubular beams. The moment-rotational responses were studied in terms of initial rotational stiffness, moment capacity, and rotation capacity. The effect of endplate thickness and bonded sleeve length was also examined. The failure modes include bending and yielding of thinner endplates, as well as splitting failure in the bonded GFRP beam region for thicker endplates with low bonded sleeve lengths.