New version of A-BOLT 2.0 was released

Our tool for assessment of bolted connections in ANSYS, A-BOLT, was updated with new features. Alongside various minor enhancements, we’ve made two significant improvements:

Harmonic and Random Vibration Analyses are now supported in A-BOLT

Now, you can insert Bolt Groups and other post-processing objects into Harmonic and Random Vibration analysis system. A-BOLT automatically extracts working loads which are subsequently used for bolt verification.

Working loads, i.e. Forces (FX – Axial, FY – Shear plane 1, FZ – Shear plane 2) and moments (MX – Torque, MY – Bending plane 2, MZ – Bending plane 1), are extracted automatically from beams representing bolts as follows:

Analysis	Values	Time steps/Frequencies for evaluation
Static and Transient Structural	Current values of FX, FY, FZ, MX, MY and MZ	All loadsteps and substeps
Harmonic (Sine vibration)	Amplitudes of FX, FY, FZ, MX, MY and MZ	All frequencies
Random Vibration	1, 2 or 3-Sigma values of FX, FY, FZ, MX, MY and MZ	All frequencies

Assessment now done completely within post-processing in ANSYS Mechanical

In previous versions of A-BOLT an APDL code was used to extract the working loads for the bolts in a bolt group. This APDL based code was executed during a solution of your structural analysis and therefore new solution of the model was needed. Current solution employs/utilizes functions from ANSYS Mechanical API for the extraction of working loads directly from ANSYS result file. This enables all settings of bolt groups and safety factor to be moved to post-processing part of ANSYS analysis workflow, see figure below.

This brings following advantages:

• The definition of bolt groups can be done after solution in ANSYS. You can now start to use A-BOLT in any of previously solved ANSYS projects. The only condition is, that the bolts in your FE-model are represented by Beam Connection object.
• In contrary to previous version the changes made in Bolt Group definition (e.g. bolt/flange dimensions and material type, preload, etc.) will not reset your solution and only result object are reevaluated.