This paper presents an FE and theoretical study on bolted ball-cylinder (BBC) joint, which mainly consists of a circular tube welded to a solid hemisphere. As a new type of jointing system for non-purlin grid structures, BBC joints may be subjected to compressive, tensile and bending loads. A non-linear FE model was developed and its reliability was verified by the experimental results from existing literature. For a design purpose, the FE model was improved by removing the additional constraints that needed during the test and modifying the material constitutive model. Failure modes, typical load–displacement relationships and stress distributions were studied based on the FE simulations. Parametrical study was conducted to investigate the influence of key parameters, such as diameter, thickness, height of the circular tube, width and height of the tubular beam, on the structural behaviour of BBC joints under various loading scenarios. Finally, empirical formulas were proposed to predict the ultimate load capacity of BBC joints and the prediction agreed well with the FE results.

本文介绍了螺栓球圆柱（BBC）接头的有限元分析和理论研究，该接头主要由焊接到固体半球的圆管组成。作为非-骨网格结构的新型连接系统，BBC接头可能会承受压缩，拉伸和弯曲载荷。建立了非线性有限元模型，并通过现有文献的实验结果验证了其可靠性。出于设计目的，通过消除测试过程中所需的其他约束条件并修改了材料本构模型，改进了有限元模型。基于有限元模拟，研究了失效模式，典型的载荷-位移关系和应力分布。进行了参数研究，以研究关键参数的影响，例如直径，厚度，圆管高度，管状梁的宽度和高度，在各种载荷情况下对BBC接头的结构行为的影响。最后，提出了经验公式来预测BBC节点的极限承载力，并且该预测与有限元结果吻合得很好。