Experimental and numerical investigation of the load-bearing capacity of bolt-fastened wedge active joints for prestressed internal bracing in subway excavations

Abstract

The present study develops a novel type of active joint node-bolt fasten wedge (BFW) active joints, aiming to investigate the load-bearing capacity of a BFW joint in a quantitative way and put forward precise formulas for its yield load and compression rigidity. To achieve this, indoor axial loading tests were conducted on two BFW joints, accompanied by a set of numerical simulations with the finite element approach implemented in ABAQUS. Parametric research was then conducted to assess the impact of various factors on the yield load and initial compression rigidity of BFW joints, leading to the derivation of precise calculation formulas for accurate prediction of these parameters. The key findings indicate that enhancing the bolt strength from 10.9 to 12.9 significantly improves mechanical performance. Under axial compression, the final bearing force, yield load, and initial compression rigidity increase by 0.86, 1.06, and 0.15 times, respectively. Numerical models accurately predict joint behavior under axial force, confirming their reliability. Parameter studies reveal that increasing web and eaves thickness, bolt strength, and diameter improves bearing capacity, while splint thickness has little effect. The fitting formulas introduced can precisely estimate yield load and rigidity, providing practical value for engineering applications.

Keywords

BFW / Load-bearing capacity / Finite element analysis (FEA) / Parametric analysis / Yield load / Compression rigidity

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Chenhe Ge: Writing - original draft, Software, Investigation. Pengfei Li: Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization. Mingju Zhang: Visualization, Methodology, Funding acquisition. Meng Yang: Software, Formal analysis. Weizi Wan: Visualization, Software.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgement

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by Beijing Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. 8222005), the Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51978018), and Science and Technology Funding Scheme for the Third Construction Engineering Company Ltd. of China Construction Second Engineering Bureau (Grant No. CSCEC2b3c-2021-K-65).

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