Abstract

Helical springs are indispensable elements in mechanical engineering. This paper investigates helical springs subjected to axial loads under different dynamic conditions. The mechanical system, composed of a helical spring and two blocks, is considered and analyzed. Multibody system dynamics theory is applied to model the system, where the spring is modeled by Euler–Bernoulli curved beam elements based on an absolute nodal coordinate formulation. Compared with previous studies, contact between the coils of spring is considered here. A three-dimensional beam-to-beam contact model is presented to describe the interaction between the spring coils. Numerical analysis provides details such as spring stiffness, static and dynamic stress for helical spring under compression. All these results are available in design of helical springs.

How Multibody Dynamics Simulation Technology is Used

RecurDyn simulations were used to validate a simplified contact model between coils of a spring. The spring was modeled using beam elements and important information for the design of helical springs such as spring stiffness, static and dynamic stress are compared with RecurDyn simulations. The result is that the simplified method is proven to be effective.

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• http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11012-013-9837-1

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