Bolted joints are the vast majority of our consulting business. Our work is divided evenly between validating joints under development and troubleshooting problems with existing joints. Our troubleshooting experience led us to develop the matrix below to help engineers solve common problems with bolted joints.

Distilling even the most common problems and solutions into the confines of this column requires simplification that may invite critical judgment from veteran hands. Our experience is that many engineers could benefit from reviewing the relationship between a problem and its likely underlying causes.