Experimental, numerical, and theoretical analysis of tapered belleville spring

Uniform thickness belleville springs(UBS) are a suitable replacement for coil springs in many applications due to their ability to take higher loads and their relatively small and compact size. This paper presents an experimental, numerical and theoretical analysis of the taper belleville spring(TBS). Experimental results on a normal taper belleville spring (NTBS), fabricated from stainless steel alloy (SS304), are presented. Non linear elastic-plastic finite element simulations support the experimental behaviour reasonably well. A correction factor based on Timoshenko’s theory of plates, to match the finite element analysis(FEA) results for NTBS, is presented. Reverse taper belleville spring (RTBS) analysis shows that it can store more elastic strain energy than UBS and NTBS. An optimisation study on TBS geometrical parameters is performed to attain maximum energy absorption for the null stiffness region.