An Alternative Design Approach for Circular Load Ring

Abstract

As an elastic body of proving rings, load rings have been continuously developed with the code of conduct provided by the National Bureau of Standards (NBS). Despite a geometry of load ring may differ from a circular ring shape, they share the same fundamentals on the thin ring stress theory. This paper presents an alternative design approach for circular ring with rectangular cross-section. This approach has been obtained from an analysis of the thin ring theory combined with its limitation and applied values of relevant material properties. Two novel dimensionless parameters have been introduced as and to overcome a cumbersome calculation in conventional practices. Moreover, these both parameters have been employed to a construction of the performance chart which is used in combination with the graph in order to design the load rings with this presented approach. According to the compression testing results obtained from the UTM, it was found that the performance of load ring is in good agreement with the designed values with an insignificant difference. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that this design approach is suitable for a practical use as well as its potential for a further development.