The Fibrous Structure of the Bolt and Its Effect on the Joint Reliability

The use of cold forging is a widely used solution in many industries. One application is the manufacture of bolts and fasteners. The largest amounts of bolts are used in the automotive and machine industry. Those customers demand high standards of quality and reliability from producers based on ISO 9001 and IATF 16949. Also, the construction, agriculture and furniture industries are raising their expectations for deliveries from year to year. Automotive companies issue their standards specifying specific requirements for products. One of these standards is the aviation standard SAE USCAR 8-4; 2019, which speaks of a compatible arrangement of fibers in the bolt head and in the area of transition into the mandrel. The article presents the cold forging process of flange bolts. Obtaining a compatible, acceptable and incompatible grain flow pattern based of the above mantioned standard was presented. Then the results of FEM simulation were correlated with the performed experiment. The effect of incompatible grain flow system was discussed and presented as the crack initiating factor due to delta ferrite, hydrogen embrittlement, tempering embrittlement. The reliability of the connections was confirmed in the assembly test for yield stress on a schatz machine. The advantages of this method and the difference compared to the tensile test were presented.