• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.702-710
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• 1999

U-shaped bellows are usually used to piping system pressure sensor and controller for refriger-ator. Bellows subjected to internal pressure are designed for the purpose of absorbing deformation. Internal pressure on the convolution sidewall and end collar will be applied to an axial load tend-ing to push the collar away from the convolutions. To find out deformation behavior of bellow sub-jected to internal pressure the axisymmetric shell theory using the finite element method is adopted in this paper. U-shaped bellows can be idealized by series of conical frustum-shaped ele-ments because it is axisymmetric shell structure. The displacements of nodal points due to small increment of force are calculated by the finite element method and the calculated nodal displace-ments are added to r-z cylindrical coordinates of nodal points. The new stiffness matrix of the sys-tem using the new coordinates of nodal points is adopted to calculate the another increments of nodal displacement that is the step by step method is used in this paper. The force required to deflect bellows axially is a function of the dimensions of the bellows and the materials from which they are made. Spring constant is analyzed according to the changing geometric factors of U-shaped bellows. The FEM results were agreed with experiment. Using developed FORTRAN PROGRAM the internal pressure vs. deflection characteristics of a particu-lar bellows can be predicted by input of a few factors.