Put a strain gage on the bolt

Kunle Kazeem Adeyemo Can you share your Abaqus model (.inp)?

Manfred A. Hirt Thanks for your response but that is meant for experimental analysis.

Nils Wagner, Thanks, I just accepted your LinkedIN request, i will share it through that channel.

You can use a strain gage measurement on the bolt shaft or measure mecanically the elongation of the bolt between the bolt head and the screw.

Both in the lab or on site.

Thanks for your response, you meant it is applicable to numerical simulation? We have done the experimental with both strain gages and fiber bragg grating sensors (we had two papers on it). So, my question was specifically for simulation.

Here is the way out. Thanks to Miguel Harreaz (technodigital) who recommended using NFORC in abaqus. With this procedure, one can track the changes in bolt preload with or without loading.

I have attached a picture for the visualization and a picture to show my simulation is close to fig 4 above.

Thanks to those who contributed to this discussion.

It could be due to contact instabilities or poor mesh quality in your simulation. In forming simulations, especially those involving contact interactions like with the ball and plate here, an overly coarse or distorted mesh can cause abrupt changes in contact forces. Additionally, if the contact algorithm settings (e.g., penalty stiffness, time step, or contact stabilization) are not appropriately defined, it can lead to non-smooth force responses.

Thanks Raja for your input, I used refined structured mesh for contact section between the plates. However, I already got the solution through NForc.