Mechanism for the Forced Strengthening on the Diaphragm Spring's Load-Deflection Characteristic

Abstract

Load-deflection characteristic of the diaphragm spring during its life time may vary, which usually leads to slipping, burns and other failures in industry application. To avoiding these failures, the forced strengthening process in manufacturing of the diaphragm spring is often applied to stabilize the load-deflection characteristic of the spring by accelerating its elastic extenuation before it goes out. However the mechanism for the forced strengthening process on the diaphragm spring load-deflection characteristic is not yet completely understood. Based on the finite element method, the model of the diaphragm spring was built and the forced strengthening process was simulated. The load-deflection characteristic before and after the forced strengthening process were obtained, respectively and compared. The difference of the load-deflection characteristic was conducted. For understanding and explaining this difference, two known mechanisms for the forced strengthening process on the load-deflection characteristic of the spring, namely the geometry change of the spring structure and residual stress effects, were introduced and studied. The results show that although two mechanisms have both attribute to this change of the characteristic of the spring after forced strengthening process, the geometry-related mechanism plays a more important role as a main mechanism and the height change of the spring is the main factor among these geometry changes in geometry-related mechanism.

A New Method for the Calculation of Characteristics of Disc Springs with Trapezoidal Cross-Sections and Rounded Edges

“…As an alternative to analytical approaches, disc springs have been modelled using FE simulations [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 8 , 10 , 13 , 30 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 , 74 , 75 , 76 , 77 , 78 , 79 , 80 , 81 , 82 , 83 ]. FE simulations are computationally more expensive than analytical approaches.…”