Stress distributions around the interference fit between a round pin and a perforated finite plate

Interference fit couplings between a perforated finite plate and a round pin are widely used mechanical systems in several industrial applications. Only a few works in the literature investigate the coupling contact pressure due to interference in the absence of an external load, and these works are limited to a few specific configurations. To overcome this limitation, this work performs a numerical systematic investigation of the pin-plate coupling for a wide range of configurations that can be encountered in practice. Three are the variables investigated: the pin diameter, the plate length, and the pin offset in the longitudinal direction, all of them normalized over plate width, for a total of 18 configurations. The work provides a detailed prediction of the contact pressure and equivalent von Mises stress along the contact surface and compares the results with photoelastic investigations retrieved from the literature. For design purposes, the results are synthesized through two stress concentration factors, one referring to the peak contact pressure, and the second one to the peak von Mises stress.