Simplified Stress Analysis of Large-scale Harbor Machine’s Wheel

In order to confirm the mechanical model of large-scale harbor machine’s wheel subject to a radial load, an analogous small wheel under a similar load is used as a reference model for investigation using finite element analysis. This analysis gives results of the stress and displacement distributions, and the results are further verified by stress testing. Several different kinds of pressure distributions, such as uniform distribution, cosine distribution, parabolic distribution and their spread angles are discussed. The finite element models under these load distributions are calculated respectively and analyzed to ascertain the best model which can be used in the design of large-scale harbor machine’s wheel. Finally, cosine distribution with spread angle 60° is used in the finite element modelling of harbor machine’s wheel, the analysis results show that this method is reliable, and is useful for direct design of the wheels.