Documentos de Académico
Documentos de Profesional
Documentos de Cultura
1 Introduction metric calculations, it has been clarified that the location at which
the maximum stress amplitude occurs varies depending on the
Threaded fasteners are the most widely used machine elements
magnitude of the contact length at the plate interface. As the plate
to clamp structural members and machine parts. A fatigue failure
interface goes out of contact, the peak of the maximum stress am-
of one threaded fastener often causes a serious problem and may
plitude appears more distinctively around the first thread root
lead to a catastrophic failure of the whole structure. It is recog-
where the maximum stress occurs in the initial clamping state.
nized that the fatigue failure of threaded fasteners is primarily
Also shown is that stress amplitudes as high as those in the first
caused by the reduction of bolt preloads owing to nut rotation or
thread root are generated around the thread run-out, as the loading
embedment at the plate interface, etc. It has also been reported
position is away from the bolt axis. Finally, the effect of a bolt
that the rupture of threaded fasteners generally occurs around the
with reduced diameter is discussed with respect to the reduction in
first thread root of a bolt adjacent to the nut loaded surface [1]. In
stress amplitude.
the previous study [2], the helical thread geometry has success-
fully been modeled by three-dimensional finite element method
(FEM), and it has been shown that the maximum stress of bolted
joint occurs in the bolt thread root at half a pitch from the nut 2 Evaluation of Stress Amplitude Using Helical
loaded surface. Regarding the fatigue strength of bolted joints, it Thread FE Model
is commonly evaluated in terms of the mean stress amplitude
exerted on the engaged thread portion, which is calculated using 2.1 Numerical Models. Bolted joints with a variety of geo-
the bolt preload variation caused by external forces. However, metric configurations are used under various loading conditions,
very few studies have treated its fatigue strength by analyzing the corresponding to the joint objectives. To evaluate the fatigue
distribution of stress amplitudes along the thread helix. strength of the target structure in detail, it is necessary to construct
In this study, the stress amplitude distributions along the thread a numerical model for each bolted joint. At the same time, it is
helix including the thread run-out are analyzed by three- desired to conduct a parametric study using numerical models
dimensional finite element analysis, using numerical models of with simple geometry under simple loading conditions, for clari-
bolted joints with accurate helical thread geometry. Then, the rela- fying the fundamental and common fatigue characteristics of
tionship between the stress amplitude and the location of fatigue bolted joints. To achieve this purpose, the geometry selected here
failure occurrence is discussed, aiming to provide fundamental is two hollow cylinders clamped by a single bolt, which is sub-
data to examine the fatigue failure mechanism of bolted joints. jected to an axisymmetric annular tensile force. Figure 1 repre-
The effectiveness of the conventional evaluation method for fa- sents the boundary and loading conditions in the numerical
tigue strength is investigated by comparing the maximum stress analyses. If the thread geometry is axisymmetric, the numerical
amplitude generated at bolt thread root to the mean stress ampli- analyses for the conditions stated above can be carried out using
tude evaluated in the engaged thread portion. As a result of para- axisymmetricmodels. The objective of this study is to clarify the
effect of the inherent nonsymmetric mechanical behavior caused
by the helical thread geometry. The numerical calculations are
Contributed by the Pressure Vessel and Piping Division of ASME for publication
in the JOURNAL OF PRESSURE VESSEL TECHNOLOGY. Manuscript received September 10,
axisymmetric except for the helical-shaped threads. The contact
2009; final manuscript received May 26, 2011; published online October 3, 2011. length designated in Fig. 1 represents the area under compression
Editor: G. E. Otto Widera. force by the bolt preload. The ratio of the contact length under
3 Numerical Results
3.1 Stress Amplitude Along Thread Root. Figure 3 repre-
sents Mises stress distributions along the bolt thread root at the
completion of bolt tightening [2], where l is the coefficient of
friction at contact surfaces. The von Mises stress at the thread root
req is normalized with respect to the nominal bolt stress rb of 100
MPa. The abscissa shows the distance from the nut loaded surface.
Maximum stress occurs, with a fairly sharp peak, at half a pitch
from nut loaded surface toward the nut top surface. When sub-
jected to external forces, six stress components may affect the fa-
tigue strength of bolted joints in a complex manner. However, it is Fig. 5 Stress amplitudes along bolt thread root before com-
considered that axial stress rz has a dominant effect. In Fig. 4(a), plete separation of plate interface
the distributions of axial stress rz along bolt thread root in the ini-
tial clamping state are compared with those under external forces 4(b) shows the stress amplitude distributions along the bolt thread
W. Initial bolt stress rb is 100 MPa. An external force of W 33.5 root, which are calculated by dividing the difference of the two
kN is applied, which is larger than the initial bolt force Fb. Figure values of rz in Fig. 4(a) by 2. In this case, the interface between
4 Discussions
In the foregoing sections, stress amplitudes are evaluated by
means of the variations of axial stress rz. The axial stress rz along
the thread root shows a distinctive distribution pattern, both in the
initial clamping state and under external forces. That is, the values
of rz are negative around the top thread, as shown in Fig. 4(a). It
Fig. 11 Stress amplitudes along bolt thread root for bolts with
reduced shank diameter
has already been explained in the previous paper [2] that the spe-
cific distribution pattern of rz generates the second peak of Mises
stress, shown in Fig. 3. This specific phenomenon can be
explained by focusing the attention on the contact condition
between bolt and nut threads around the nut top surface. When the
axial coordinate of the bolt thread root, which is measured from
the nut loaded surface, increases along the helix and reaches 9
mm, i.e., half a pitch below the nut top surface, the mating threads
of bolt and nut suddenly loses the contact. This separation changes
the sign of axial stress at the bolt thread root from tension to com-
pression, since the bolt thread is no longer subjected to bending
Fig. 10 Stress amplitude distributions in radial direction from moment caused by the contact pressure between bolt and nut
bolt axis toward thread root threads. In order to examine the phenomenon in detail, contours
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to acknowledge Mr. Shunsuke Kaneda
(FUJITSU TEN TECHNOLOGY) for his contributions to the nu-
merical works in this study.