How do steel spring clips prevent stress relaxation under high vibration conditions through structural design?
Publish Time: 2026-02-19
Steel spring clips, with their unique elastic structure and clamping performance, have become the core component for pipe fixing and connection in vibration environments. They not only provide stable clamping force but also prevent stress relaxation and loosening under long-term high-frequency vibration, ensuring safe system operation.
1. Material Strengthening: The Foundation for Enhancing the Elastic Limit
The relaxation resistance of steel spring clips depends primarily on material properties. Traditional carbon steel spring clips are prone to plastic deformation under high-frequency vibration, leading to a decrease in clamping force. After quenching and tempering, the elastic limit is increased to over 800 MPa. More importantly, the material grain size is controlled to ASTM grade 8 or higher, reducing stress concentration caused by microscopic defects and reducing the risk of relaxation from the source.
2. Waveform Structure Design: The Key to Distributing Vibration Stress
The "waveform structure" is the core design feature of steel spring clips for relaxation resistance. Traditional straight clamping arms are prone to generating unidirectional bending stress during vibration, accelerating fatigue failure. Waveform or multi-arc surface designs disperse vibration energy to multiple bending points, avoiding stress concentration. Actual measurement data shows that waveform structures can improve stress distribution uniformity by 50% and extend fatigue life by more than 3 times. Some products also have reinforcing ribs at the root of the clamping arm to further reduce the risk of deformation in high-stress areas.
Under high vibration conditions, clamping force attenuation is a direct manifestation of stress relaxation. Modern steel spring clips employ a preload compensation design, reserving 10% to 15% elasticity margin during initial assembly. When vibration causes slight relaxation, the spring clip can automatically release the reserved elastic energy to maintain effective clamping force. Some high-end products also use a dual-spring structure, with the main spring responsible for clamping and the auxiliary spring responsible for compensation, forming a dual protection mechanism to ensure stable clamping force throughout the entire lifespan.
4. Surface Strengthening Treatment: A Barrier to Delay Fatigue Cracks
Surface treatment is equally important for the anti-relaxation performance of spring clips. Shot peening can form a compressive stress layer on the surface of the steel spring clips, with a depth of 0.1 to 0.2 mm, effectively inhibiting the initiation of fatigue cracks. For coating selection, zinc-nickel alloy or Dacromet coatings not only provide corrosion protection but also reduce the coefficient of friction, minimizing fretting wear during vibration. The stress relief process after heat treatment removes residual machining stress, preventing premature failure caused by its superposition with working stress.
In summary, the stress relaxation resistance of steel spring clips under high vibration conditions is a complex engineering process. From material strengthening, waveform design, preload compensation, surface treatment to testing and verification, each step is crucial to ultimate reliability. It is the synergistic effect of these precise designs that enables steel spring clips to operate stably in harsh environments such as automotive, aerospace, and industrial equipment, providing reliable assurance for the safe operation of piping systems.
