Screw thread Calculations

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Home Screws Index Page... Screw Stress Areas

Introduction The critical areas of stress of mating screw threads are

The effective cross section area, or tensile area, of the external thread. The shear area of the external thread which depends upon minor diameter of the tapped hole The shear area of the internal thread which depends on the major diameter of the external thread

The allowable stresses and screw end force and the method of applying the force in the calculation of the tensile stress are not considered on this page but are addressed on this site by tables and more importantly referenced links If a screw threaded fastener is to fail it is preferable that the screw fails rather than the internal or external thread strips. The length of the screw engagement should therefore be sufficient to carry the full load necessary to break the screw without the threads stripping. The size of a screwed fastener is first established by calculating the tensile load to be withstood by the screw and selecting a suitable screw to withstand the tensile load with the appropriate factor of safety or preload. If the joint is fixed using a nut and bolt then assuming the nut is selected from the same grade as the bolt there is little need to size the nut. The fastener manufacture sizes the length of the nut to ensure the screw will fail before the nut. If the screw fastens into a tapped hole then a check of the depth of thread engagement is required. Generally for female and male threads of the same material with, the female thread is stronger than the male thread in shear for the same length of engagement The following rules of thumb are suggested for arriving at reasonable lengths of thread for steel screws used with screwed holes in weaker materials.

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Screw thread Calculations

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For steel a length of thread engagement of at least 1 x Nominal dia's of the thread For Cast Iron or brass or bronze the thread engagement should be at least 1,5 x Nominal dia's of the thread For Aluminium , zinc or plastices the thread engagement should be at least 2 x Nominal dia's of the thread However for a quality safe connection, when the tapped material has a significantly lower ultimate tensile strength than the screw material, - to ensure the screw will fail in tension before the female, it is preferable to use suitably rated nuts or engineered thread inserts. For some notes on thread Inserts ref. Thread Inserts Important Note: Various studies on thread loading have established that the shear stress is not evenly distributed across the threads. The first thread withstanding the load is the highest stressed and the next one is much less stressed and so on... . If the thread materials were very hard and did not yield the first thread could be withstanding nearly all the load. However because of material yielding there is some distribution of the load. A study (see link 2 below) has established that for a typical grade 8 nut the percentage of the load taken by consecutive threads are about 34%, 23%, 16%,11%,9%, 7% .... This effect can be alleviated by using very accurate threads and by using ductile materials for the components. It has been established that,for carbon steel, there is no increase in thread shear strength by having a thread engagement length in excess of the screw diameter. It is normal practice to use a tapped hole depth of about 1,5 x nominal diameter - this allows at least 1 diameter of good thread engagement. A very simple rule that can be applied for that vast majority of applications is that a thread length of 80% of the screw diameter (standard nut height) is sufficient for ensuring that the screw will fail in tension before the female thread (nut) fails in thread stripping (assuming the screw and nut are similar materials). Equations below indicate how to make adjustments if the tapped metal (nut) strength is lower than the screw/bolt.

Stress Area formulae

D = Basic Diameter. p = Screw Thread Pitch Le = Length of Thread Engagement A t = The screw thread tensile stress area d p = Pitch circle diameter of thread A ss =The thread shear area The following formula for the Tensile Stress Area of the (male) screw

This is based on ISO 898 Part 1. see calculation below.. d p = Pitch circle diameter of thread

d p = (D - 0.64952.p )

The thread shear area = Ass When the female and male threads are the same material.

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A ss = 0.5. . d p . L e = 0.5 (D - 0.64952.p ). L e

To ensure that the screw fails before the thread strips it is necessary the the shear area is at least 2 times the tensile area. i.e

L e (min) = 2 . A t / [0.5 . .(D - 0.64952.p )]

This assumes that the male and female thread materials have the same strength. If the Female Material strength is lower i.e J as calculated below is greater than 1 then the length of engagement must be increased to prevent the female thread stripping

If the value of J is greater than than 1 then the length of engagement must be increased to at least

More Detailed Notes The above formulae are sufficient to enable the tensile strength to be calculated and to allow the depth of thread to be confirmed for a tapped hole Following are equations to provide more accurate evaluation of the shear strength of threads. These are equations derived from FED-STD-H28/2B, 1991 and Machinerys Handbook eighteenth Edition. They strictly apply to UN thread series but if the relevent metric screw thread dimensions are used they will give reasonable results. In practice when the values are calculated the value for the screw shear strength is similar to the very convenient formula provided above. These equations are only of theoretical value Screw Shear Area Calculations

K nmax = Maximum minor diameter of internal thread. E smin = Minimum pitch dia of external thread. E nmax = Maximum pitch dia of internal thread. D smin = Minimum major dia of external thread. n = 1/p = threads per unit (mm) Minimum Length Of Thread (Assuming male and female threads are materials of similar strength).

Shear Area For Screw

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Shear Area For Female Thread

If material in which the female thread is tapped is significantly weaker that the screw material then J must be evaluated.

If the value of J is greater than than 1 then the length of engagement must be increased to at least

Stress area -ISO 898 Note: Short derivation of nominal stress area formula from info in BS EN ISO 898..

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Some calculated Stress Areas for ISO Metric Threads..medium fit (6H / 6g) The purpose of this table is to show the results of the above formula. It is clear from this table that there is no major benefit in using the detailed formula above. The approximate formula for the screw thread shear stress area (A ss) is generally sufficiently accurate and there is no need to use the more detailed formula for As. For sizes below M6 the formulas yield very similar values. For sizes M6 and above the value for Ass provides a slightly more conservative result (20% margin at M36) I have obtained the thread dimensions on tables in Machinery's Handbook 27th ed. If you intend to use this information please check it against a reliable source (ref disclaimer above) All dimensions in mm Size Basic Dia Pitch 1/p Stress Dia Tensile Stress Area Pitch circle dia. Shear Area/unit Length Shear Area D (mm) p n Ds At dp M3 3.00 0.50 2.0000 2.5309 5.0308 2.6752 M4 4.00 0.70 1.4286 3.3433 8.7787 3.5453 M5 5.00 0.80 1.2500 4.2494 14.1825 4.4804 M6 6.00 1.00 1.0000 5.0618 20.1234 5.3505 M8 8.00 1.25 0.8000 6.8273 36.6085 7.1881 M10 10.00 1.50 0.6667 8.5927 57.9896 9.0257 M12 12.00 1.75 0.5714 10.3582 84.2665 10.8633 M14 14.00 2.00 0.5000 12.1236 115.4394 12.7010 2.00 0.5000 14.1236 156.6684 14.7010 M16 16.00 M20 20.00 2.50 0.4000 17.6545 244.7944 18.3762 M22 22.00 2.50 0.4000 19.6545 303.3993 20.3762 M24 24.00 3.00 0.3333 21.1854 352.5039 22.0514 3.50 0.2857 26.7163 560.5872 27.7267 M30 30.00 4.00 0.2500 32.2472 816.7226 33.4019 M36 36.00

Approximate Method Ass/mm Assm =2. At 4.2023 5.5690 7.0378 8.4045 11.2910 14.1776 17.0641 19.9506 23.0922 28.8653 32.0069 34.6383 43.5530 52.4676

10.0616

17.5574

28.3650

40.2468

73.217

115.9792

168.533

230.8788

313.33568

489.5888

606.7986

705.078

1121.1744

1633.4452

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Length of Thread (Ass=2*At) Max.Minor Dia (nut) Min Pitch Dia (Screw) Max Pitch dia (Nut) Min Major dia (Screw) Shear Area/unit length (Screw) Shear Area /mm length (Nut) Length of Thread (As= 2*At)

Le = 2.3944 Ass /A ss/mm

3.1527

4.0304

4.7887

6.4845

8.1805

9.8765

11.5725

13.5689

16.9612

18.9584

20.3534

25.7428

31.1324

More Accurate Method Knmax E smin E sub>nmax D smin 2.5990 2.5800 2.7750 2.8740 3.4220 3.4330 3.6630 3.8380 4.3340 4.3610 4.6050 4.8260 5.1530 5.2120 5.5000 5.7940 6.9120 7.0420 7.3480 7.7600 8.6760 8.8620 9.2060 9.7320 10.4410 10.6790 11.0630 11.7010 12.2100 12.5030 12.9130 13.6820 14.2100 14.5030 14.9130 15.6820 17.7440 18.1640 18.6000 19.6230 19.7440 20.1640 20.6000 21.6230 21.2520 21.8030 22.3160 23.5770 26.7710 27.4620 28.0070 29.5220 32.2700 33.1180 33.7020 35.4650

A s /mm

3.9034

5.4728

7.0731

8.6458

12.1612

15.5796

18.9762

22.4239

26.0969

33.2791

37.0302

40.4623

51.6384

63.0982

A n/mm

5.5466

7.7691

9.9988

12.1909

16.8285

21.4769

26.1173

31.0335

35.5699

45.3881

50.0141

55.0098

69.5512

84.0601

Le

2.5777

3.2081

4.0103

4.6551

6.0206

7.4443

8.8813

10.2961

12.0067

14.7116

16.3866

17.4238

21.7120

25.8873

Relevant Links 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. Bolt Science..A site dedicated to the Science & Technology of bolted joints F.E.D.S Screw Thread design .A very useful and informative document- You must read this if you are doing detaile design. Tribology-ABC Screw Joints metric Lots of very useful notes and calculators Heli-coil Catalogue Wire thread Insert - the simple method of providing high thread strength with thread locking. Bolted Joints..An informative paper published on the Web Metric Bolt Strength..Bolt Sizes Strengths- American bias Croberts Com..Very useful section on the consequence of Bolt Failure Fastener Design Manual...NASA GRC RP-1228 (9.6 Mbyte pdf file). Design info on bolt + rivet joints Bolt Council Publications...->Guide to Design Criteria for Bolted and Riveted Joints.(6.7 Mbyte pdf file). Excellent .... The yielding of fasteners during tightening...An article with surprising conclusions Keeping It All Together ...Practical notes on bolted joints from an enthuiast International Thread Standards .. A comprehensive set of thread tables including BSP

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Last Updated 29/07/2012

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