The effect of manufacturing imperfections in the slip joints

Abstract

Abstract The issue of imperfections is mostly related to additional internal forces. However, our understanding of imperfections is associated with the change of structural behaviour. In our case, the most likely indicated effects of imperfections are the reduction of the contact area, and the unreachability of the required overlap length. The behaviour of these slip joints depends on sufficient contact between sliding parts. The contact area is affected by the imperfections of the manufactured steel tubes. This contribution presents the manufacturing tolerances and subsequently, it describes the incorporation of them into the design of the slip joint. Furthermore, the article presents a comparison between the ideal numerical model and model with imperfections involved. Moreover, this numerical model is verified by experimental measurements. The results indicate that imperfections have a significant impact on the slip joints. In our comparison, the effect of imperfections is about 120%.