Further study on thermal deformation reduction for CFRP-based improved ball screws

Abstract

To determine the thermal deformation of ball screw in actual working condition, a novel method for determining thermal deformation of ball screws in complicated working condition is proposed based on G-code and finite-element (FE) method. In the complicated working condition, it is difficult to obtain and import the nut movement into FE model due to the complex nut movement. In this research, the nut movement is directly determined from G-code by MATLAB code programming. The nut location is recorded with time in a file. The thermal parameters can be determined according to the nut speed with time as well. In the implicit FE analysis, the nut location is read from the input file instead of nut location calculation before every time step. And then, the effect of factors, such as working condition and materials, on thermal deformation reduction of ball screw is studied. The thermal deformation reduction of ball screws under different rotational speed, actual working condition, and different axial elastic modulus of composites is discussed, which can provide the guidelines to evaluate the thermal deformation reduction and design the composite in improved ball screws.