I'm trying to use the Bolt Diameter Design calculator in the Bolted Connection Design accelerator and am getting high diameter recommendations. I think the problem is that this tool seems to be only intended for use in a single-lap (two material layer, i.e. one friction plane) scenario. I' designing for a double-lap (three layers of material) slip-critical joint where the top & bottom layers are fixed and the middle layer is put into tension. Thus there are two friction planes but the calculator seems to assume one friction plane, resulting in the incorrect recommendations.
Is it OK to just manually multiply the value I enter in the Joint Friction Factor field by the number of friction planes for my use case? If no, can someone suggest how to properly use the calculator when the number of friction planes is greater than one?
Also, what's the Force Input Factor used for? Is it safe to just leave at it's default (n=0.5)? The diagram presented is pretty inscrutable and I can't seem to find any documentation for how it's used.
Finally a suggestion to Autodesk: It would be more really helpful to clearly document what formulas are applied, not just the inputs & outputs. Even if it's only in results report, that would seem crucial to professionally document design results. Much better than trying to either reverse-engineer the calculations or shrug and say "Autodesk says it's in compliance".
