• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.3 no.6
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• pp.96-111
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• 1995

A bellows is a component installed in the automobile exhaust system to reduce the impact from an engine. It's stiffness has a great influence on the natural frequency of the system. Therefore, it must be designed to keep the specified stiffness that requires in the system. This study present the finite element analysis of U-typed bellows using a curved conical frustum element and the shape optimal design with specified stiffness. The finite element analysis is verified by comparing with the experimental results. In the shape optimal design, the weight is considered as the cost function. The specified stiffness from the system design is transformed to equality constraints. The formulation has inequality constraints imposed on the fatigue limit, the natural frequencies, the buckling load and the manufacturing conditions. A procedure for shape optimization adopts a thickness, a corrugation radius, and a length of annular plate as optimal design variables. The external loading conditions include the axial and lateral loads with a boundary condition fixed at an end of the bellows. The recursive quadratic programming algorithm is selected to solve the problem. The result are compared with the existing bellows, and the characteristics of the bellows is investigated through the optimal design process. The optimized shape of the bellows are expected to give quite a good guideline to the practical design.