Experimental investigation and modeling of dynamic performance of wave springs

This paper investigates vibration suppression potentials for a novel frictional system - a wave spring. Two different types of wave springs, crest-to-crest and nested ones, were used in this work. Compared with nested wave springs, crest-to-crest wave springs have lower damping and a larger range for the linear stiffness due to a reduced level of contact. Dynamic compressive tests, subject to different static compression levels, are carried out to investigate the force-displacement hysteresis of individual wave springs. The stiffness is shown to increase up to 800% when the static compression is at 40%. The crest-to-crest wave spring is shown to provide loss factors up to 0.12 while nested ones as high as 0.80. Testing also showed that performance did not degrade between room temperature and 100°C. The effect of different spring materials, inner diameter and flat spring width are also evaluated.