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Dovetail Wedge Clamp Assembly: Coulomb Stick-to-Slip Breakaway under Axial Surge (2 CAD Bodies)
2-body 45-face B-Rep mechanical dovetail clamp housing and tapered wedge slider solved with 3D Coulomb friction (μ = 0.35), capturing inclined-flank frictional locking (stick) and axial breakaway sliding (slip).
Dovetail toolholders, turbine blade roots, and machine-tool slideways rely on normal pressure across inclined wedge flanks to generate frictional locking force against axial pullout. This 2-body B-Rep assembly models a flanged clamp housing (`clamp_housing.step`, 28 CAD faces with bolt bores and lightening pockets) and a tapered dovetail wedge bar (`sliding_wedge_bar.step`, 17 CAD faces with 649 mm² angled contact flanks). Under vertical clamping pressure p = 0.22 MPa, Phase 1 (t = 0…15 ms) verifies static Coulomb locking (`|ux| = 0.1091 mm < slipTol = 0.15 mm`), while Phase 2 (t = 15…60 ms) applies an axial pullout surge that overcomes μF_N and drives 88.56 mm of sliding across 34 master-facet switches.
1. Geometry & FEA Mesh
- •2 B-Rep CAD bodies (45 faces total): flanged dovetail housing (28 faces, 2,642 TET4) and tapered wedge slider bar (17 faces, 1,215 TET4).
- •Total mesh: 3,857 TET4 elements, 1,217 nodes, 3,651 DOFs.
- •Coulomb frictional contact (`contact body1 body2 frictional mu=0.35 slip=1.5e-4`) solved across 41 implicit HHT-α steps (41 saved animation frames).
2. Loads & Boundary Conditions
- •Housing base and mounting flange faces fixed (`fix surface number 41, 47, 53`), lateral guide faces constrained in Y (`surface number 27, 46`).
- •Vertical clamping preload pressure p = 0.22 MPa applied to slider top pad (`load surface number 67 pressure=2.2e5`).
- •Two-phase axial surge `base_accel = {460, 0, 0} m/s²` (`amplitude="0:0,0.015:0.005,0.060:1.00"`).
3. Simulation Results & Findings
- ✓81 node-steps recorded in Coulomb stick and 102 node-steps in active slip across 21 contact nodes, with 34 facet-to-facet transitions and 0.8508 J frictional energy dissipation.
- ✓Phase 1 stick displacement held at |ux| = 0.1091 mm; Phase 2 breakaway slip reaches |ux| = 88.556 mm (811.9× breakaway ratio).
- ✓Peak von Mises contact stress reaches 3.33 MPa along the inclined dovetail flanks.
WebCAE's 3D Coulomb frictional contact solver accurately resolves stick/slip locking thresholds and sliding wear paths on inclined wedge and dovetail joints.
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