Smith: “You have mentioned the importance of fatigue resistance. Is there a difference in the procedures for strength and fatigue testing between aerospace and the specialty racing industry?”

GH: Yes. While the ultimate tensile strength testing is the same, fatigue testing is different. Aerospace fasteners are fatigue tested to the relevant specification of fluctuating tension load and -number of cycles typically 130,000 cycles with the high tension load at 50% of the UTS and the low load at 10% of the high load. If all of the test samples last 85,000 cycles (per AMS 5842-D), the lot is accepted.

Even though racing fasteners are not continuously subjected to their maximum design load, at 18,000 rpm, 100,000 cycles takes just 5 minutes, thirty-four seconds. Except for drag racing, measured in seconds, no race lasts just 5 minutes. Therefore we consider this Aerospace Standard to be inadequate. At ARP, we fatigue test to elevated loads (10% above aerospace requirements) and to a minimum cycle life that exceeds 350,000 cycles. The majority of samples are routinely tested to one million cycles. During material development...and in the case of extremely critical new designs, we test to destruction.

Thread rolling is the last mechanical operation in our manufacturing process. For each production run the thread rolling machine is shut down after a few parts. These parts are inspected for dimensional accuracy and thread quality, and are physically tested for both strength and fatigue before the run is continued. Random samples are inspected and tested throughout the run. Extremely critical components are individually inspected for dimensional integrity.