Abstract
A bolt heater is frequently used to tighten large bolts that cannot be clamped by any other method. Although the tightening process inherently requires a fair amount of working hours, a bolt heater is less expensive than other tightening tools and can be applied to a tightening operation in a narrow space. This paper proposes a basic method to evaluate the tightening process with a bolt heater, aiming at broader use for middle-sized bolts. A one-dimensional finite difference method was applied to analyze the heating process by which bolt elongation was calculated for a specified heating period. An equation relating bolt elongation to axial bolt force is also proposed; the effects of contact stiffness due to surface roughness are incorporated for better estimation of the axial bolt force. The effectiveness of the basic method proposed here was demonstrated by experiments.
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