ON THE SEPARATION PROCESS IN BOLTED STEEL SPLICE PLATES

A method is herein proposed for the investigation of the separation process of bolted steel splice plates. Applying the classical unilateral contact law, the continuous problem is formulated and then the discrete problem is formulated as a quadratic optimization problem with inequality constraints. Two methods from the theory of optimization, the Theil-van de Panne and the Hildreth-d'Esopo method, are proposed for the numerical treatment of the formulated problem. The applicability and the effectiveness of the proposed method are illustrated in the last part of the paper by means of two numerical examples.