On the Spring Constant of Bellows Type Air Springs

Abstract

In this report, we treated the stiffness of bellows type air springs, introducing volumetric effective area A_v, pressure effective area A_p and several coefficients which are determined by bellows form ; obtained the formulas of stiffness, inner pressure and load ; calculated the shape coefficients of various types of tire type bellows and made clear the conditions under which the stiffness is small. The results applied to air springs for railway cars and models of air springs show close agreement with experimental data.