Viscous Friction Effect During the Process of Tightening and Loosening of Bolted Joints

Bolted connection is one of the most widely used mechanical connections because of its easiness of installation and disassembly. Research of bolted joints mainly focuses on two aspects: high precision tightening and improvement of anti-loosening performance. The under-head bearing friction coefficient and the thread friction coefficient are the two most important parameters that affect the tightening result of the bolted joint. They are also the most critical parameters that affect the anti-loosening performance of the bolted joint. Coulomb friction model is a commonly used model to describe under-head bearing friction and thread friction, which considers the friction coefficient as a constant independent of normal pressure and relative sliding velocity. In this paper, the viscous effect of the under-head bearing friction and thread friction is observed by measuring the friction coefficient of bolted joints. The value of the friction coefficient increases with the increase of the relative sliding velocity and the decrease of the normal pressure. It is found that the Coulomb viscous friction model can better describe the friction coefficient of bolted joints. Taking into account the dense friction effect, the loosening prediction model of bolted joints is modified. The experimental results show that the Coulomb viscous friction model can better describe the under-head bearing friction coefficient and thread friction coefficient. The model considering the dense effect can more accurately predict the loosening characteristics of bolted joints.