• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.504-513
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• 1999

Usually bellows are designed for the purpose of absorbing axial movement. To find out axial stiffness of bellows the axisymmetric shell theory using the finite element method is adopted in this paper. Bellows can be idealised by series of conical frustum-shaped elements because it is axisymmetric shell structure. The force required to deflect bellows axilly is a function of the dimensions of the bellows and the materials from which they are made. The displancements of nodal points due to small increment of force are calculated by the finite element method and the calculated nodal displacements are added to r-z cylinderical coordinates of nodal points. The new stiffness matrix of the system using the new coordinates of nodal points is adopted to calculate the another increments of nodal dis-placements that is the step by method is used in this paper. 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 spring constant can be predicted by input of a few factors.