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by millebe 775 days ago
This wouldn’t work. The primary reason heating and cooling bolts works for their removal is because they expand anisotropically due to constraints and then shrink uniformly. If you remove a bolt in this way and measure it with a micrometer, you will find the cross section has permanently narrowed and the bolt has permanently elongated, an ever so slight amount.

Assuming you managed to install a preheated bolt, it would become looser as it cooled down.

1 comments

Now if you tried this with a hot bolt and equally hot nut, the bolt would contract along its length, but the threads would get looser so it’d probably still be a net loss for clamping load.

Rivets, on the other hand, are commonly heated and forged so that both ends have a head, and then as they cool the clamping load increases. This was very common a hundred years ago, but my understanding is that bolted joints provide a more predictable clamping load and that is why they are so dominant today.