Performance appraisal of a rubber-metal spring

Abstract

Spring is an elastic element that deflects under the action of load and returns to its original shape when the load is removed. Rubber-metal springs are assemblies of rubber blocks and metal plates joined in series. The rubber and metal plates may joined by vulcanization or they may have only the free contacts. In this paper a free contact case has been considered. One of the most important properties of spring is that it can absorb shocks and vibrations. Rubber-metal springs are good shock absorber as they possess elastic and damping characteristics simultaneously. They can work individually or in combination with pure metal springs. Some of the most important applications of rubbermetal spring are observed in railway buffer springs, draw gear, buffer springs in elevator, air-craft landing gears and so on. The present paper researches on reducing hysteresis by using rubber- metal spring in place of metal spring. Data have been recorded to compute accumulated energy, released energy, absorbed energy and finally hysteresis. Experimental results show that hysteresis in rubber- metal spring is lower than that in pure metal spring.