A Fundamental Study on Development of Non-Welded Flexible Joint

: The flexible joint with bellows and flange is made by welding bellows and flange in general. The welded parts cause a crack or demage in the flexible joint due to continuous vibration and fatigue limit. This paper is concerned with development of flexible joint with non-welded, free rotation of flange and non-packing to improve fatigue failure condition between bellows and flange. The support box and support plate that are components of press part are designed to compress fore-end of bellows only without demage of bellows. The production system of flexible joint is designed with piston attached on the compression side. The simulation is performed using Deform 3D software. As the result of simulation, the shape of compressed bellows was most proper in the compression power of 157 kg·f and any deformation has not occurred at a part besides fore-end. The result show that the production possibility of the designed flexible joint.