Prediction of Wear at Revolute Clearance Joints in Flexible Mechanical Systems

In this paper, a numerical approach is proposed to predict wear at the revolute clearance joint in flexible mechanical systems, which integrates wear prediction with flexible multibody dynamics. In the approach, the flexible component is modeled based on absolute nodal coordinate formulation, and the contact force in the joint is calculated by a continuous contact model. The comparison of the wear predicted at the clearance joint in rigid and flexible planar slider-crank mechanism demonstrates that the proposed approach can be used to model and predict wear at revolute clearance joint in flexible multibody systems, and the wear result predicted is slightly reduced after taking components’ flexibility into account.