Impact of flange geometry on the ultimate axial load capacity of V-band clamps

Modern turbochargers typically comprise a body in three parts; the turbine and compressor housings and the bearing housing. The preferred method of joining these three parts, in automotive applications, is to use a band clamp with a flat bottomed V-shaped cross section mating with appropriate flanges on the body sections. This method of clamping allows for rapid assembly and infinitely variable relative rotational orientation of the body parts. In this paper finite element analyses are carried out to predict the influence of different flange geometries to the ultimate axial load capacity (UALC), which show a significant dependency on the flange thickness.