Preliminary study of friction in automotive ball joints

Abstract

The present paper offers a brief description of the testing equipment, experimental methodology and some results regarding the motion resistive effort in automotive ball joints. The local ball joints manufacturers have difficulties in controlling the clamping force of the ball joints in the production process. Due to this, an original experimental device was conceived and built in order to evaluate the magnitude and evolution of internal friction between the joint's surfaces. The experimental setup's main advantage is the capacity of controlling and maintaining a constant clamping force and that it ensures a constant motion of the ball stud. The force magnitude was recorded using resistive transducers connected to a data acquisition system. The numerical values were recorded and used to analyse the mobility of the tested ball joints.