Yes / The torque-tension relationship of threaded fasteners affects almost all engineering disciplines. Tribological processes at fastener interfaces manifest as the system's friction coefficient. Lubrication-related influences are usually described empirically using K or μ. The drive towards lightweight fastener materials in engineering systems and lubricants with reduced environmental impact is challenging existing knowledge and industrial practice in a range of applications, many safety critical. More comprehensive understanding is needed to achieve repeatable friction during assembly and re-assembly, resistance to loosening and fretting during operation, and effective anti-seize for disassembly with a growing range of materials and lubricants. The lubricants considered showed three predominant lubrication mechanisms: plastic deformation of metal powders; burnishing/alignment of molybdenum disulphide, MoS2; and adhering/embedding of non-metal particles. Multivariate analysis identified key sensitivities for these mechanisms. Assembly generated changes at fastener surfaces and in the lubricating materials. Re-assembly exhibited significant reductions in friction. / The full-text of this article will be released for public view at the end of the publisher embargo on 07 Dec 2024.

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This dissertation discusses the thermomechanical analyses performed on threaded fasteners and curvilinearly stiffened composite panels with internal cutouts. The former problem was analyzed using a global/local approach using the commercial finite element software ANSYS while a fully functional code using isogeometric analysis was developed from scratch for the latter. For the threaded fasteners, a global simplified 3D model is built to evaluate the deformation of the structure. A second local model reproducing accurately the threads of the fasteners is used for the accurate assessment of the stresses in the vicinity of the fasteners. The isogeometric analysis code, capable of performing static, buckling and vibration analysis on stiffened composite plates with cutouts using single patch, multiple patches and level set methods is then discussed. A novel way to achieve displacement compatibility between the panel and stiffeners interfaces is introduced. An easy way of modeling plates with complicated cutouts by using edge curves and generating a ruled NURBS surface between them is described. Influence on the critical thermal buckling load and the fundamental mode of vibration due to the presence of circular, elliptical and complicated cutouts is also investigated. Results of parametric studies are presented which show the influence of ply orientation, size and orientation of the cutout, and the position and profile of the curvilinear stiffener. The numerical examples show high reliability and efficiency when compared with other published solutions and those obtained using ABAQUS, a commercial software. / PHD / Aircraft in flight are subjected to different loads due to maneuvers and gust; there external forces cause internal loads and depend on the location of the panel in the aircraft. The internal loads, may result in the buckling of the panel. Hence, there is a need for studying structural efficiency and develop strong and stiff lightweight structures. Stiffened composite panels is a technology capable of addressing these needs. However, when used in space vehicles moving at hypersonic speeds, such structures experience significant temperature rise in a very short time resulting from the aerodynamic heating due to friction between the vehicle surface and the atmosphere. Such phenomena is more prominent during reentry and launch processes. Hence, it is really important to consider thermal effects while designing and analyzing such structures. Composite stiffened panels have many advantages like small manufacturing cost, high stability, great energy absorption, superior damage tolerance etc. One of the main failure modes for stiffened composite panels is thermal buckling. An extensive literature review on thermal buckling of stiffened composite panels was conducted in this dissertation. Thermal buckling and vibration analysis as well as a parametric study of a stiffened composite panel with internal cutouts was conducted, and verified using ABAQUS, a Finite Element Software.

The purpose of this research is to determine if anaerobic adhesive can be used as a prevailing torque locking feature. Maintaining preload in critical joints is the usual standard that anaerobic adhesives are held to in aerospace and other industry. To test if anaerobic adhesive can be used as a prevailing torque locking feature a test procedure was developed and implemented to measure the removal torque of threaded fasteners after an allotted cure time. In total, 191 threaded fasteners of different material and coatings were tested in the unseated and seated states with various strengths and varieties of anaerobic adhesive. A series of three tests were conducted: initial use, reuse with no added anaerobic adhesive, and a third test with added product to the bolt and nut to see how removal torque would behave in these conditions. It was found that using anaerobic adhesive as a prevailing torque locking feature is viable in many cases. No published work to date analyzes anaerobic adhesive at the standard of a prevailing torque locking feature.

Threaded fasteners tend to break and loosen when exposed to cyclic loads or potent temperature variations. Additionally, if the joint is held tightly to the structure, distortion will occur under thermal expansion issues. These complications can be prevented by identifying and regulating the clamping force to an appropriate degree – adapted to the properties of the joint. Torque-controlled tightening is a way of monitoring the clamping force, but it assumes constant friction and therefore has low accuracy, with an error of around 17% - 43%.This thesis investigates if the friction and clamping force can be estimated using the Extended and Unscented Kalman filters to increase the precision of the torque-controlled methodology. Before the investigation, data were collected for two widely used tightening strategies. The first tightening strategy is called Continuous Drive, where the angular velocity is kept at a constant speed while torque is increased. The second strategy is TurboTight, where the angular velocity starts at a very high speed and decreases with increased torque. The collected data were noisy and had to be filtered. A hybrid between a Butterworth lowpass filter and a Sliding Window was developed and exploited for noise cancellation.The investigations revealed that it was possible to use both the Extended and Unscented Kalman filers to estimate friction and clamping force in threaded fasteners. In Continuous Drive tightening, both the EKF and UKF performed well - with an averagequality factor of 81.87% and 88.38%, and with an average error (at max torque) of 3.54% and 4.09%, respectively. However, the TurboTight strategy was much more complex and had a higher order of statistical moments to account for. Thus, the UKF outperformed the EKF with an average quality factor of 93.02% relative to 24.49%, and with an average error (at max torque) of 3.50% compared to 4.19%

The threaded fastener is by far the most common method for securing components together and plays a significant role in determining the quality of a product. Atlas Copco offers industrial tools for tightening these fasteners, which are today suffering from errors in the applied torque. These errors have been found to behave in periodic patterns which indicate that the errors can be predicted and therefore compensated for. However, this is only possible by knowing the rotational position of the tool. Atlas Copco is interested in the possibility of acquiring this rotational position without installing sensors inside the tools. To address this challenge, the thesis explores the feasibility of estimating the rotational position by analysing the behaviour of the errors and finding periodicities in the data. The objective is to determine whether these periodicities can be used to accurately estimate the rotation of the torque errors of unknown data relative to errors of data where the rotational position is known. The tool analysed in this thesis exhibits a periodic pattern in the torque error with a period of 11 revolutions.  Two methods for estimating the rotational position were evaluated: a simple nearest neighbour method that uses mean squared error (MSE) as distance measure, and a more complex circular fully convolutional network (CFCN). The project involved data collection from a custom-built setup. However, the setup was not fully completed, and the models were therefore evaluated on a limited dataset. The results showed that the CFCN method was not able to identify the rotational position of the signal. The insufficient size of the data is discussed to be the cause for this. The nearest neighbour method, however, was able to estimate the rotational position correctly with 100% accuracy across 1000 iterations, even when looking at a fragment of a signal as small as 40%. Unfortunately, this method is computationally demanding and exhibits slow performance when applied to large datasets. Consequently, adjustments are required to enhance its practical applicability. In summary, the findings suggest that the nearest neighbour method is a promising approach for estimating the rotational position and could potentially contribute to improving the accuracy of tools. / Skruvförband är den vanligaste typen av förband för att sammanfoga komponenter och är avgörande för en produkts kvalitet. Atlas Copco tillverkar industriverktyg avsedda för sådana skruvförband, som dessvärre lider av små avvikelser i åtdragningsmomentet. Avvikelserna uppvisar ett konsekvent periodiskt mönster, vilket indikerar att de är förutsägbara och därför möjliga att kompenseras för. Det är dock endast möjligt genom att veta verktygets vinkelposition. Atlas Copco vill veta om det är möjligt att erhålla vinkelpositionen utan att installera sensorer i verktygen. Denna uppsats undersöker möjligheten att uppskatta vinkelpositionen genom att analysera beteendet hos avvikelserna i åtdragningsmomentet och identifiera periodiciteter i datan, samt undersöka om dessa periodiciteter kan utnyttjas för att uppskatta rotationen hos avvikelserna hos okänd data i förhållande till tidigare data. Det verktyget som används i detta projekt uppvisar en tydlig periodicitet med en period på 11 varv. Två metoder för att uppskatta vinkelpositionen utvärderades: en simpel nearest neighbour-metod som använder mean squared error (MSE) som mått för avstånd, och ett mer komplext circular fully convolutional network (CFCN). Projektet innefattade datainsamling från en egendesignad testrigg som tyvärr aldrig blev färdigställd, vilket medförde att utvärderingen av modellerna utfördes på ett begränsat dataset.  Resultatet indikerade att CFCN-metoden kräver en större datamängd för att kunna uppskatta rotationen hos den okända datan. Nearest neighbour-metoden lyckades uppskatta rotationen med 100% noggrannhet över 1000 iterationer, även när endast ett segment så litet som 40% av signalen utvärderades. Tyvärr lider denna metod av hög beräkningsbelastning och kräver förbättringar för att vara praktiskt tillämpbar. Sammantaget visade resultaten att nearest neighbour-metoden har potential att vara ett lovande tillvägagångssätt för att uppskatta vinkelpositionen och kan på så sätt bidra till förbättring av verktygens noggrannhet.