Closure to "Active shear planes of bolted connections failing in block shear" by Drew D. A. Clements and Lip H. Teh

The writers thank the discusser for the interest in the original paper

and for the discussion, which provides the opportunity to clarify

and reiterate a few points made in the original paper.

The writers agree with the discusser that the behavior of bolted

connections is not as simple as they appear to be to the casual

observer, which is one reason why many structural collapses have

been associated with connection failures. Furthermore, a substantial

number of code equations for various ultimate limit states of

bolted connections lead to considerable errors on either side of conservatism

(Teh and Clements 2012; Teh and Gilbert 2012; Teh and

Yazici 2013a).