Ball and socket joints in the human body? Ball studs in automotive suspension ball joints? Plastic, steel, or other materials? As you can appreciate, without any details it is next to impossible to provide a meaningful answer to your question.
Yeah, I tried to type in the equation and it didn't work so well. Thank you for your reply.
To give more info, the semi-spherical ball (about half of the sphere) sits in a semi spherical socket and there is a hole in the center of the spherical socket. Thus, my potential bearing area is essentially a radial ring. I have found some information on Roark's ball and socket stress equations. I've attached the equations to this post.
I'm getting a higher value using this equation than I did using Hertz' equation for concave to convex contact. I would have expected better results. I do not have the actual reference with text, so I'm not sure what the assumptions are.
I have a static load condition and I'm trying to determine the actual stresses on the ball and socket. I would like to specify equal radii, but as dhengr pointed out, I should use some tolerance in my calculations to cover the machining tolerances.
The materials will either be grade 50 steel or ductile iron.
