Belleville Washer - Rising Rate

[Silente]

Hi!

I am working on a belleville washer arrangement for a suspension.

I found very useful informations on the web on how to calculate single spring stiffness starting from geometrical features and on how to calculate the whole configuration stiffness from how many springs you use and how you put them.

But i know that one of belleville washers features is that they allow to create a rising rate spring.

Does anybody has any reference on how to calculate a Force vs displacement curve for such a configuration?

I mean something like this:

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where > is a belleville disc.

Thanks

[fixitmattman]

Interesting approach.

For such a simple component design of belleville style washers can be quite complex. The standard approach should be to pick off the shelf size and design from there. The manufacturers of the springs will be able to provide a load vs. deflection curve for the particular spring. These can also normally be found on their websites (google works well).

[Drew Price]

I believe a fair bit of the rising rate will come from when the softer washers start to become fully collapsed, like coil bind on a rising rate coil spring setup with multiple coils. The softer ones compress until they are collapsed, and then you start seeing the modified rate of the stiffer springs, and then some of them collapse, etc.

You should be able to write a script for this pretty easily, but you'll have to be thoughtful how you define your distances and such.

Best,
Drew