I was curious about how strong the aviation grade bolts are. With help from the University in Delft at the faculty of Aerospace Engineering I did some tension tests.
I tested the standard AN3 bolts (125 kpsi) and also the stronger NAS6603 shear bolts (160-180 kpsi) in combination with a tension nut AN365 (125 kpsi).
We used a Zwick-Roell 20KN tensile tester with an extensometer to measure the change in length of the bolt during the test:
The setup was the bolt, with a washer under the head, another washer under the nut and a nut, screwed to the bolt with 1 protruding thread:
During the test we found out that the extensometer couldn’t measure the bolt length because the bolt was too small:
The result was surprising, at around 12000 Newton / 1200 Kg / 2640 lbs the maximum force was reached but the bolts didn’t break. The threads of the nut were stripped off.
Test result:
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