Martinovs, Andris

2017, Svetlana Polukoshko, Martinovs, Andris, Vladimirs Gonca

In this paper laminated elastomeric bearings (composite of thin elastomer and metal layers) are considered. This type of bearings or joint-hinge has many advantages because of ease of maintenance; ability to work in a very aggressive environment, low cost and vibration damping capability. The geometric shape of such bearing may be planar, cylindrical, conical, spherical and other, given work deals with spherical thin-layered rubber-metal bearings. Operating of such device depends on many factors that must be considered on the design stage: parameters of the elements must be selected properly. The most important parameter is stiffness – dependence between imposed force and received deformation. In this work torsional, compression and shear stiffness of laminated bearings was defined for the testing specimens by experiments and torsional stiffness was received analytically. Both methods show good enough coincidence.