Bolted joints of pultruded sandwich composite laminates

This paper describes the tensile behavior of bolted joints of pultruded sandwich composite laminates. The pultruded sandwich laminates have a skin-core-skin structure. Joint strength of longitudinal specimens was independent of specimen width (w), whereas it increased with w in the case of transverse specimens. The joining efficiency of pultruded sandwich laminates was greater in the longitudinal direction than in the transverse direction. The core layer of longitudinal specimens failed by a combination of bearing and shear-out modes, independent of w. The failure mode of skin layers changed from net-tension to bearing mode with increasing w. In transverse specimens, the failure mode of core and skin layers changed from net-tension to bearing with increasing w. Finite element numerical analysis was carried out to predict the failure mode and joint strength. The numerical results were in good correlation with the experimental results.