EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL STUDIES ON RADIAL SPHERICAL PLAIN BEARING BASED ARTICULATED JOINT SUBJECTED TO RADIAL LOADING

摘要

Recently,a type of articulated joint based on radial spherical plain bearing is adopted in civil engineering.The joint has complex configurations and its mechanical behaviour is not clear.A test was carried out on a full-scale joint to study the behaviour of the joint under radial loading.Monotonic loading was applied to the joint until 9600KN,which is about 5.3 times of the design load value.The joint keeps intact in the test and the bearing can still rotate after unloading.This shows that the joint has good mechanical performance.The strain was measured with strain rosettes mounted on the lugs and bearing.It is observed that strains around the contact region distribute unevenly and the peak values are much larger than the average.Strain history of the joint indicates that strain increases linearly with respect to radial loading at initial stage; and non-linearity is observed when the loading is relatively large.A finite element model was created and analysed by using ABAQUS.Von-Mises stress distribution of different parts and the maximum stress location is clarified in the paper.