The Rubber-boots for C. V. joints play the role of protecting the C. V. joint assembly. Also they serve to prevent the penetration of dusts and lubricate the joint part for the life time of the steering mechanism. It is required the boot endured the life-time of a vehicle without having to be replaced due to damage caused by wear etc. The boot shapes a few bellows to enable easy bending. Large rotation over 40 degrees occurs depending on the rotation of the wheel axis leading to the self contact phenomena of the boot bellows. This contact phenomena cause wear of the product and have great influence on the endurance life of the product.
In this study, an elastic finite element analysis is carried out using continuum elements and SRI scheme is used to prevent locking by the incompressibility of rubber. Contact treatment is carried out using the displacement constraints at the case of rigid contact and imposing the same contact forces on two contact boundaries at the case of self contact. At the case of self contact, various methods for determining contact forces is suggested. Also contact formulations are constructed.
The finite element program developed is applied to a class of contact problems such as Hertzian contact problem, bending of double cantilever beam, compression of C. V. joint boots and bending of C. V. joint boots. These applications demonstrated the validity of the various algorithms.
