Experimental investigation of shear bolted connections for tubular racking structures

The competition in the field of storage racking structures is so that the companies proposing structural solutions for such structures are always looking for an optimisation of the structural elements, through the use of optimized thin wall members, and for an optimisation on site, by proposing easy and cheap connections to limit the time of construction. Within this framework, a simple connection with long bolts for tubular racking structures represents an interesting solution whose shear resistance is not covered by the rules provided by the current EC3. In order to verify the possibility to extend the formulations given in EC3 for connections between plates elements to this kind of connection solution in the present paper the results of an experimental campaign on 24 bolted connections, between hollow tube and long through bolts, are presented and analysed. In particular the attention is focused on the bearing failure mode around the tube’s hole due to bolt’s shank contact pressure. The performed analyses evidenced, preliminarily, that Eurocode 3 gives conservative values for the prediction of the bearing resistance.