On the evaluation of the peak contact stresses in a press-fitted shaft-hub coupling subject to bending

The peak contact stresses are addressed that are developed from the frictionless press fit of a shaft subjected to bending into an elastically similar hub with bore rounded edges. The non-linear behavior of this progressive contact is addressed by scaling a local solution available from the literature, with the aid of intermediate, auxiliary problems extracted from the fracture mechanics realm. The title problem being linear on the global domain with both the bending couple and the interference, this problem is solved by combining the FE forecasts obtained for two separate load cases, i.e. a) the interference alone and, b) the bending couple alone. Such results are expressed in terms of a) stress intensity factors for the auxiliary FM problems, and b) hoop strain component, as sampled in the proximity of the indenting edge for both the mating members. Design formulae for the contact stresses are proposed, that account for various normalized geometrical parameters, such as the outer to inner hub radii ratio, the radius of the hub bore fillet, and the contact length. Comprehensive coefficient tables are provided as well. Finally, an error analysis for the proposed method is presented.