FLEXIBLE COUPLING HAVING RE-ENTRANT CURVED COLUMNS FOR MAINTAINING HIGH TORSIONAL RIGIDITY DESPITE MISALIGNMENT

摘要

For shafts (10, 12) that are nominally collinear and are coupled to rotate together while being subject to misalignments of different kinds, a flexible coupling (14) is provided that includes curved re-entrant columns (42) circumferentially spaced about the axis of rotation and individually deformable by bending or twisting or both. The composite result is that torque of a given loading is transferred uniformly from the driving to the driven member r(10, 12) regardless of the misalignment effects, since different deformations are introduced and compensated in the columns (42) dependent on their instantaneous positions in the cycle of rotation. The arrangement enables meeting different load and misalignment requirements by varying the parameters of the columns (42) along their lengths. Furthermore, different combinations of the couplings can be used to achieve special results.