Fatigue behavior of bolted joints: Comparative analysis for the effect of fretting and stress concentration

In this paper, a methodology is developed to investigate the combined effect of some main factors (bolt pretension load, shear load, coefficient of friction, and bolted joints structure) on the fatigue performance of bolted joints. A parameter k, which reflects the ratio of bolt pretension load to shear load, is used to evaluate the competition effect of fretting and stress concentration on fatigue damage of bolted joints. The analysis result deduces that as the increase of k, the effect of stress concentration is decreased, while the influence of fretting is increased. At the increase of the bolt pretension load, the fatigue crack formation position will be far away from the hole center. This parameter k can be used as a design or assembly parameter to improve the strength performance of the bolted joints.