Towards Best Practice for Bolted Connections in High Strength Steels (DURAMECH)

The main goal of the DURAMECH project is to understand, predict and ultimately increase the fatigue resistance of bolted connections in moderately thick high strength steel materials, used in applications for heavy machinery.By combining a substantial experimental effort with advanced numerical methods, the fatigue properties of these joints will be assessed and compared with welded solutions that typically have a much lower fatigue resistance. At the same time, design guidelines and best practice modelling techniques for these types of connections will be derived. During the project, the rsults are applied to relevant cases supplied by the end users.