ABSTRACT- ENGINE FASTENER One of the most overlooked aspects of aviation safety is the fastener and more specifically

the engine fasteners. Anyone who has been around aircraft engines know that they are a unique engineering marvel and are capable of some pretty spectacular feats, but to accomplish this the engines have to produce tremendous amounts of stress and heat. To put it in perspective it is not uncommon for an aircraft engine to produce 30,000 lbs. of thrust with temperatures at the exhaust ports exceeding 2000 F. To hold these engines and power plants together we depend upon various types of fasteners. All aerospace fasteners are required to be subjected to rigorous testing both non-destructive and destructive to validate their characteristics prior to installation in an aircraft. This is also another reason why these fasteners generally cost more than normal hardware store ones. Most of these tests are conducted by independent test labs that are certified national standards such as National Aerospace and Defense Contractors Accreditation Program (NADCAP), SAE AMS specs and Aerospace Industries Association, National Aerospace Standards (AIA-NAS). The most common testing required for aerospace applications are nondestructive inspection, tensile load, stress rupture, fatigue strength, hardness, microscopic and macroscopic analysis. Nondestructive testing is a wide group of analysis techniques used in science and industry to evaluate the properties of a material, component or system without causing damage. The purpose of nondestructive testing is to detect surface and sub-surface defects that are not detectable with a human eye visual inspection. In the United States Aerospace industry all nondestructive testing houses and inspectors have to be certified and trained in accordance with AIA-NAS-410. There are multiple methods of nondestructive testing but in the aerospace fasteners the two most common are magnetic particle and liquid penetrant. Magnetic particle inspection is a process for detecting surface and slightly subsurface discontinuities in ferroelectric materials such as iron, nickel, cobalt, and some of their alloys. The process puts a magnetic field into the part that magnetizes them by direct or indirect magnetization. The magnetic lines of force are perpendicular to the direction of the electric current which causes magnetic flux to leak out showing the presence of a surface or subsurface discontinuities in the material. Liquid penetrant is a form of nondestructive inspection which uses a liquid mixture to detect surface discontinuities on ferrous and nonferrous metals. Liquid Penetrant is based upon capillary action where low surface tension fluid penetrates into clean and dry surface-breaking discontinuities. After adequate penetration time has been allowed, the excess penetrant is removed, and a developer is applied which will allow the penetrant to draw out of the flaw and improve the visible indications. Inspection is performed under ultraviolet or white light, depending upon whether a fluorescent or nonfluorescent dye was used in the penetrant. Tensile testing is a destructive test in which a small sample of fasteners is subjected to a tensile force to help determine the ultimate tensile strength of the fastener. Tensile testing of fasteners helps us understand the amount of force required to pull the fastener out of the base material. While straightforward, the many shapes and sizes of fasteners complicate the testing. Most manufacturers must not only test for ultimate tensile strength but also to validate that no permanent deformation has occurred once the proof load is removed. Tensile testing is achieved by placing the fastener in a testing machine that applies force to both the head and end of the fastener. The applied force is recorded

versus the elongation of the fastener, and once it fractures those values is recorded. From there a standardized formula is applied to validate the UTS and make sure it is within the specification requirements for UTS. Stress-rupture is also a destructive test in which a sample is subjected to constant load for a given amount of time at a given temperature to induce the sudden and complete failure of the fastener. This test is used by fastener manufacturers to determine how their products will perform when subjected to constant loads at both ambient and elevated temperatures. Fatigue is a measure of the stress that a material can withstand repeatedly without failure. A fatigue failure is particularly catastrophic because it occurs without warning. Fatigue tests are performed on fasteners by alternating loading and unloading the part. Most testing is done at more severe strain than its designed service load but usually below the material yield strength. Fatigue testing equipment is usually designed to induce cyclic loading and unloading to a known (peak) stress and measure the number of such cycles to failure of the specimen. Hardness testing is destructive test used to determine the hardness of a material to deformation. Hardness testing is an indentation test where a tester uses a diamond tipped applicator to indent into the shank of the fastener. The indentation that is left after the indenter and load are removed is known to "recover", or spring back slightly which is known as shallowing. There are actually two forms of indention testing, microindention and macroindention, which depend on the force applied. The biggest difference between them is microindention testing typically has an applied force less than 2 Newtons. One thing that is always called out in the specification is what type of hardness test is required and what scale it is measured to. Like most other things in the testing world there are multiple types of test and each has its own operations to determine and measure the hardness rating. In aerospace applications the three most common are a Vickers hardness test (HV), Brinell harness test (HB) and a Rockwell hardness test (HR). The last form of testing, and most interesting to me, is the Micro and macro analysis of the fastener. The basis of these test are that a sample is taken and cut in half to be analyzed under a microscope. Most specifications call for an etching agent which is listed in the specification to help microstructures appear under the microscope. Once the etching agent is applied the fasteners are placed under a microscope with a magnification of 20x to 200x to have various characteristics visually inspected. The flow lines of the material are normally viewed at a 20x resolution and need to be analyzed to verify they follow the contour of the shank, head-to-shank fillet, and the load bearing surfaces of the fastener. The fastener is then normally inspected at a 200x magnification looking for intergranular attack (IGA), thread and head defects. IGA is a form of corrosion where the boundaries of crystals are depleted of their corrosion inhibiting elements and are more susceptible to corrosion. This will show up on the microanalysis as spots in the boundaries that appear as black areas. At the same magnification the threads and head of the fastener are analyzed for any small imperfections in them such as laps or cracks that are not visible to the naked eye. The last microanalysis is normally conducted at 100x magnification and it is a grain size analysis. Once the fastener is magnified and the actual grain structure of the crystals is visible it is then compared to standard examples of grain sizes for conformance to specification requirements.