Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Gifu Uni6ersity, 1 -1 Yanagido, Gifu 501 -11, Japan
b
Toyota Motor Company, Toyota-shi, Aichi 471, Japan
c
Tokai Rika Company Limited, Oguchi-cho, Niwa-gun, Aichi 480 -01, Japan
Abstract
It is widely known that screw fasteners loosen sooner or later, even so-called anti-loosening screw fasteners available in the
market do not prevent loosening, as reported in an earlier paper. The purpose of this paper is to present the development of a
real anti-loosening screw fastener that has a strong resistance against loosening without sacrificing any of the advantageous
features of conventional screw fasteners. Before introducing the development, the mechanism of the loosening process of screw
fasteners is investigated. It is shown that the loosening of screw fasteners is caused by two factors. One is relative slip between
the bolt and nut screw threads, the slip causing torsion in the bolt. The other is relative slip between the bearing surface of the
bolt or nut and the surface of the fastened material, the slip causing slackening of the torsion. The prevention of loosening should
be possible if either one of these causes is eliminated. Aiming at eliminating the first cause, the torsion, a new screw named The
Step-Lock Bolt (SLB) is developed. The developed bolt has eight steps in which the lead angle degree is nil at the circumference
of the thread. The efficacy in preventing the initiation and progress of loosening is examined by applying a force cyclically at right
angles to the center line of a bolt. The results show that whilst a conventional fastener lost the fastening force within 1000 cycles,
the developed SLB does not lose the fastening force until over 30000 cycles. It may thus be concluded that the SLB is a practical
means of preventing screw fastener loosening. 1998 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Bolt; Loosening; Screw Fastener
1. Introduction
Screw fasteners are undoubtedly one of the most
important machine elements. The outstanding feature
of screw fasteners is that, despite their design simplicity, they provide a high clamping force. Screw fasteners, therefore, have been used almost world-wide since
the 14th century. However, they have an inherent and
inevitable fault: they all loosen eventually by vibration
[1 5]. Many troubles caused by the loosening of
screw fasteners are reported frequently. Although several methods have been proposed to prevent screw
fasteners from loosening, these troubles do not seem
to be decreasing.
The purpose of this paper is to present an idea for
a real anti-loosening screw fasteners that is very resistant to loosening without sacrificing any of the advan-
* Corresponding author
0924-0136/98/$19.00 1998 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.
PII S0924-0136(97)00419-6
210
211
Table 1
Basic thread profile
Pitch (mm)
Crest (mm)
Root (mm)
Height of thread (mm)
Flank angle
SLB
0.75
0.078
0.132
0.487
58
0.75
0.094
0.094
0.487
60
212
213
214
215
Table 2
Loosening thresholds of various fasteners when fastened by 16 kN
5. Conclusions
Aiming to prevent the loosening of screw fasteners,
the authors proposed an SLB which has eight steps in
the circumference of the helix of the screw. A SLB of 8
mm diameter was produced, and its anti-loosening per-
Screw fasteners
Threshold l (mm)
Coarse scr.
Fine scr.
Nylon ins.
Spring wshr.
Serr flange
Step-lock bolt
0.10BlB0.15
0.15BlB0.20
0.15
0.15
0.10BlB0.15
0.4Bl
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Mark Adams for
the genuine interest he showed in this research, for the
valuable suggestions given at the last stage of this
analysis and for spending so much of his valuable time
to check this manuscript.
References
[1] N. Sase, K. Nishioka, H. Fujii, Analysis of screw fasteners
loosening and development of evaluation method, Trans. Jpn.
Soc. Mech. Eng. 62 (596) (1996) 1527 1532.
[2] G.H. Junker, New criteria for self-loosening of fasteners under
vibration, SAE Int. Automotive Eng. Congr. 1969, paper no.
690055, 1969, pp. 314 335.
[3] K. Hongo, Loosening of bolt and nut fastenings, Trans. Jpn.
Soc. Mech. Eng. 30 (215) (1964) 934 939.
[4] A. Yamamoto, S. Kasei, Investigations on the self-loosening of
threaded fasteners under transverse vibration, J. Prc. Eng. 42 (6)
(1976) 507 511.
[5] N. Sase, S. Koga, K. Nishioka, H. Fujii, Evaluation of AntiLoosening Nuts for Screw Fasteners, Proceeding of the International Conference on AMPT93, vol. 2, 1993, pp. 10511062.
.
.