A USER-FRIENDLY ANALYTICAL APPROACH TO THE STRESS ANALYSIS OF THE ROTATING RING OF WRAPPING MACHINES

Wrapping machines usually consist of a two- or a four-column frame, supporting a huge rotating ring, which is connected to a pre-stretch unit with film coil carrier. Ring rotation at a speed up to 80 rpm leads to a complete overwrapping in few seconds. In high stiffness machines the ring is constrained at eight points in the vertical and radial directions. The structural analysis of the rotating ring is treated by many references, however, its statically indeterminate structure makes this problem original and much complicated. The optimization process by conventional finite element modeling could be time consuming and computationally expensive. The goal of this paper consists in the development of a general analytical model for the structural analysis of rotating rings. The experimentally validated results are collected in a user-friendly way, plotted in graphs in terms of normalized internal loads.