Effects of root radius and pitch difference on fatigue strength and anti-loosening performance for high strength bolt–nut connections

The fatigue strength improvement and anti-loosening performance are studied experimentally and analytically for JIS M16 bolt–nut connections. Three different root radii are considered coupled with three different pitch differences. The enlarging the bolt root radius improves the fatigue limit of the bolt by more than 30% because both stress amplitude and mean stress can be reduced. Furthermore, suitable pitch difference improves the fatigue limit by more than 25%. This is because under no pitch difference the crack initiation always occurs at No.1 or No.2 threads close to the bolt head causing the final failure; however, under a suitable pitch difference the crack initiation occurs at No.6 or No.7 threads far away from the bolt head. Good anti-loosening performance can be expected for the bolt–nut connections having enlarged root radius because the prevailing torque T P  = 19 Nm and the residual prevailing torque T P u = 10 Nm are not smaller compared to other special bolt–nut connections.