A comparative study of stress distribution in interference fitted assemblies

Abstract

Interference fitted assemblies find wide engineering applications such as bearing bushes, liners in cylinder blocks and small end bush in connecting rods. The strength of any such assemblies depends on various geometric features, amount of interference and other physical conditions of the mating surfaces. This paper presents the details of analysis carried out to study the effect of different pin and bush materials, low temperature (cryogenic) treatment and geometric parameters on stress distribution at the mating surface of interference fitted assemblies. This work covers, analysis based on Lame’s approach and finite element method – to evaluate the principal stresses and Von Mises stresses on the performance of interference fitted assemblies. For the finite element analysis(FEA), an appropriate finite element model was developed to analyse the pattern of contact stresses in interference fitted assemblies with and without low temperature effect and under varying geometric parameters such as contact length, mating diameter and amount of interference. A comparative study of both the methods has been carried out.