A Development of CAD Program for Metal Bellows Diaphragm

A CAD program for metal bellows diaphragm was developed in this study. This program was written in AutoLISP on the AutoCAD system with a personal computer. Basic design concept used in this program is composition of a convolution that is tangent to two lines and 5 circles from given design parameters(initial radius, inner and outer diameter, thickness, pitch, etc.). The effects of altering some design parameters on stress distribution and fatigue life of bellows were estimated using commercial FEM code, NISAII. As a result, the metal bellows diaphragm was successfully designed by the CAD program. It is used to model a bellows geometry in pre-processor of FEM code. The FEM result shows that stress is dependent on straight line length, bellows diameter with same span, and fatigue life is also affected by design parameters.