Contact Stresses in Dovetail Attachments: Finite Element Modeling

The stress analysis of dovetail attachments presents some challenges. These challenges stem from the high stress gradients near the edges of contact and from the nonlinearities attending conforming contact with friction. To meet these challenges with a finite element analysis, refined grids are needed with mesh sizes near the edges of contact of the order of one percent of the local radii of curvature there. A submodeling procedure is described which can provide grids of sufficient resolution in return for moderate computational effort. This procedure furnishes peak stresses near contact edges which are converging on a sequence of three submodel grids, and which typically do converge to within about five percent.