Friction Characteristics in Light Weight Design Focusing Bolted Joints
Today more and more light weight structures are used for moved components in automotive, aviation and general industry. Often assemblies of these structures are realized by friction-based connections. Therefore precise information about the friction coefficients are necessary, because in light weight design no simple approximation of the loading capacity with significant over-dimensioning is possible. Furthermore, the short-time tribology of mechanical contacts plays an important role during tightening of bolted joints, especially when using light metals and coated surfaces. Still today, the tightening method of torque controlled screw assembly is the most used. For this tightening method the friction coefficients have to be well-known for an efficient design of the bolted joint. Up to now analytical calculations do not consider any local deviation of friction behavior in component systems, only average values are taken. This is the reason why in modern engineering processes extended friction laws are necessary. A suitable formulation should take contact pressure and sliding velocity into account. Based on this, the contribution shows experimental examples for main uncertainties of frictional behavior during tightening with different material combinations (results from assembly test stand).