Introduction to the Design and Behavior of Bolted Joints

John H. Bickford worked as a Private Consultant, Middletown, Connecticut prior to his retirement. He also served as Vice-President and Manager of the Power-Dyne Division at Raymond Engineering, Inc. in Middletown, Connecticut. He is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and Founder and former President of the Bolting Technology Council. Michael Oliver earned his B.S. degree from North Carolina State University, and his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Dayton. His work with fastener technology began when he worked at Delphi Automotive in Dayton, Ohio, as their Senior Fastener Engineer, running their Fastener Test Lab for 10 years. During this time period Dr. Oliver received his Ph.D. in Threaded Fasteners. He spent the rest of his career dealing with sustainment issues of aerospace structures, which also included aerospace threaded fasteners. His lab performed thread inspections using System 23 thread gaging as well as TIR on various locations on threaded fasteners. We obtained thread and under-head coefficient of friction values, established torque/clamp-load correlations, and created residual torque values for quality audits. Testing was a big part of my job. The remining time was spent traveling the world dealing with is called quality spills (some company did something that usually changed either the frictional coefficient(s) or material properties of one of the members of the threaded bolted joint).