Modeling and vibration analysis of bolted joint multi-plate structures with general boundary conditions

Modeling and dynamic analysis of bolted joint plates under general boundary conditions are presented in this study, where the flange geometry is considered. An artificial spring technique is utilized to simulate the general boundary conditions and connection of bolts. The energy functions of plates and flanges are obtained based on the Kirchhoff and Euler-Bernoulli beam theories, respectively. Then, by taking the Chebyshev polynomials as admissible functions, the Lagrangian approach is applied to obtain the equations of motion for the bolted joint plates. The discretized motion equation is obtained by employing the assumed mode method. The accuracy of the present method is verified by comparing the results with those from ANSYS. Finally, parametric studies are performed to analyze the effect of boundary spring stiffness, flange geometry parameters, the bolt number and its connecting stiffness, and the plate size on the vibration properties of bolted joint plates. The results indicate that there exist abundant frequency veering and mode shift phenomena in the bolted joint multi-plate structures.