Experimental and numerical analysis of a load distribution along the length of contact in involute spline shaft

Abstract

In mechanical drive system for transmitting power the spline hub connections are widely used. Finite element method is used to find the load distribution along the length of spline, for analysis a frictional contact with 0.15 coefficient of friction and pure penalty method is used. For finding the load distribution three location is defined as entry, mid and exit. It is observed for partial spline contact over a length, two zones are created as contact and free zone. The analysis is performed for five partial contact length and torque respectively and it is observed that there is average 10.82% stress reduction at the entry point of spline and 64.60% stress reduction at the middle point of spline. There is no change is in the stress at the exit of a spline. The nature of the stresses in contact zone is uniformly decreasing toward the free zone and the stresses in free zone are also uniformly decreasing toward an exit of spline. The highly localized stress is identified in free zone probably at the end of percentage length of contact and this stresses uniformly decreasing toward the shoulder of spline shaft in the free zone. At the end of spline contact the stresses are high and this causes the failure of spline at this location.