2024 ARP Catalog

20 must be considered in preventing fatigue; attention to design details is essential. Fatigue failure is frequently caused by localized stress risers, such as sharp corners. In bolts, this would correspond to the notch effect associated with the thread form. It is well known that the maximum stress in an engaged bolt occurs in the last engaged thread. By removing the remaining, non-engaged threads, the local notch effect can be reduced. This leads to the standard configuration used in most ARP rod bolts: a reduced diameter shank and full engagement for the remaining threads. Providing a local fillet radius at the location of the maximum stress further reduces the local notch effect. Thus this configuration represents the optimum with respect to fatigue strength. The reduced diameter shank is helpful in another sense. It reduces the bending stiffness of the bolt. Therefore, when the bolt bends due to deformation of the connecting rod, the bending stresses are reduced below what they would otherwise be. This further increases the fatigue resistance of the bolt. A typical bolt configuration is shown below. Once the bolt configuration has been established, the manufacturing process comes into play. This involves many facets, which are discussed in detail elsewhere. Here, however, one process is of primary interest. With respect to bolt fatigue strength, thread rolling is a major consideration. Threads are rolled after heat treating. This process, which deforms the metal, produces a beneficial compressive stress in the root of the thread. It is beneficial because it counteracts the fluctuating tensile stresses that can cause fatigue cracking. If heat-treatment were to occur after rolling, the compressive stresses would be eliminated. This would therefore reduce the fatigue resistance of the bolt. An additional factor must be taken into account in defining the bolt configuration: the length of engaged thread. If too few threads are engaged, the threads will shear at loads that are lower than the strength of the bolt. As a practical matter, the thread length is always selected so that the thread shear strength is significantly greater than the bolt tension strength. This problem is especially important in bolts used in aluminum rods because of the fact that the shear strength of aluminum is much lower than the shear strength of steel. Motorsports Fastener Engineering for the Non-engineer FASTENER TECH

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