Fasteners in composite plates: effects of interfacial friction

The effects of tangential friction at pin—hole interfaces are appropriately modelled for the analysis of fasteners in large composite (orthotropic) plate loaded along its edges. The pin—hole contact could be of interference, clearance or neat fit. When the plate load is monotonically increased, interference fits give rise to receding contact, whereas clearance fits result in advancing contact. In either case, the changing contact situations lead to non-linear moving boundary value problems. The neat fit comes out as a special case in which the contact and separation regions are invariant with the applied load level and so the problem remains linear. The description of boundary conditions in the presence of tangential friction, will depend on whether the problem is one of advancing or receding contact, advancing contact presenting a special problem. A model is developed for the limiting case of a rigid pin and an ideally rough interface (infinitely large friction coefficient). The non-linearity resulting from the continuously varying proportions of contact and separation at the interface, is handled by an “Inverse Formulation” which was successfully applied earlier by the authors for smooth (zero friction) interfacial conditions. The additional difficulty introduced by advancing contact is handled by adopting a “Marching Solution”. The modelling and the procedure are illustrated in respect of symmetric plate load cases. Numerical results are presented bringing out the effects of interfacial friction and plate orthotropy on load-contact relations and plate stresses.