Experimental Analyses on the Resistance of Tapped Blind Holes

Bolted connections are commonly used in steel construction. The load-bearing behavior of bolt fittings has extensively been studied in various research activities and the bearing capacity of bolted connections can be assessed well by standard regulations for practical applications. With regard to tensile loading, the nut does not have strong influence on resistances, since the failure occurs in the bolts due to higher material strengths of the nuts. In some applications, so-called “blind holes” are used to connect plated components. In a manner of speaking, the nut is replaced by the “outer” plate with a prefabricated hole and thread, in which the bolt can be screwed and tightened. In such connections, the limit load capacity cannot solely be assessed by the bolt resistance, since the threaded hole in the base material has strong influence on the structural behavior. In this context, the available screw-in depth of the blind hole is of fundamental importance. The German National Annex of EN 1993-1-8 provides information on a necessary depth in order to transfer the full tensile capacity of the bolt. However, some connections do not allow to fabricate such depths. In these cases, the capacity of the connection is unclear and not specified. In this paper, first experiments on corresponding connections with different screw-in depths are presented and compared to limit load capacities according to the standard