In the conventional methods, the shear failure load of composite pretightened tooth connections is determined by experiment. To determine the shear failure load of the composite pretightened tooth connection without performing experiments, a method based on the characteristic lengths is presented in this paper. This method involves three steps: first, the characteristic lengths of the composite are determined; second, the stress distribution of the composite joint is analyzed by the use of a finite element method; finally, the failure load is predicted by the stress distribution of the characteristic length and failure criterion. The failure loads based on the characteristic lengths are validated by the test results for composite joints with different parameters. In comparison with the experimental data, this method provides higher magnitudes of failure load with a difference of <11% of the test value, except one with 11.6%. Good agreement was observed among the results of the present numerical method and the test. The method in the present work can be directly used in the design of pretightened tooth connections.

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Due to the insufficient connection efficiency of the bolted connection of pultruded composites, a novel composite connection technique called hybrid bolt-tooth connection was proposed. The paper presents a series of experiments studying the bearing capacity and the failure mode of the hybrid bolt-tooth connection by comparing with the pure bolted connection. Furthermore, the influences of the depth, the length and the number of the teeth on the connector's failure mode and bearing capacity were studied. The results indicate that compared with the pure bolted connection, the hybrid bolt-tooth connection has a higher connection efficiency thanks to the load sharing of the teeth. The number, the depth and the length of the teeth exhibit a significant influence on the bearing capacity and failure modes. With the increase of the number and the length of the teeth, the bearing capacity is improved effectively; the bearing capacity of the connection with shallow teeth is significantly higher than that with deep teeth. Therefore, the hybrid bolt-tooth connection is an effective jointing method and has a good application prospect.

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