SCHNORR has now manufactured Disc Springs for over 60 years.

This period has been marked by extraordinary technical developments

and Disc Springs have found many new and important
applications due to their special characteristics and advantages.
In order to meet customer requirements, SCHNORR has con stant ly
raised the quality of its products and researched solutions to customer
problems. Looking back, the development of the SCHNORR
Handbook for Disc Springs, which had its origin in the 1930s, is a
mirror of SCHNORRs endeavours. The 1942 issue, 60 years ago,
already contained characteristic diagrams for 21 standard springs
as well as application and installation standards and in struc tions for
empirically based spring calculations. Each new issue revised the
technical content to conform to the state of the art.
SCHNORR would like to acknowledge and thank all of its colleagues
at the Technical Universities of Braunschweig and Darmstadt
for their suggestions and developments in the fi eld of disc springs.
Their continued collaboration will ensure that the SCHNORR Handbook
continues to be the source of technical advise on Disc Springs,
as it has been for many decades.
A disc spring is a conical shell which can be
loaded along its axis either statically or
dynamical ly. The loads are normally applied
to the upper inner edge and the lower outer
edge. Either a single spring or a stack of
springs can be used.
The Story of the Disc Spring
Although the disc spring has found a wider
application during the last few decades, it is
still an old established machine component.
The original inventor is not known, but more
than 130 years ago (on 26.12.1861 to be
precise) Julien Francois Belleville of Dunkirk
was granted French Patent Number 52399
for a spring design which already contained
the principle of the disc spring. The importance
this invention achieved is un known,
but the fact that even today France and the
Anglo Saxon countries still speak of Bellevil
le Springs infers a broad dissemination of
this or similar springs. Today this tends to
denote a disc spring of inferior quality, which
still refl ects the not always satisfactory design
and function of springs at that time. This
is no wonder considering that in the last
century neither the theoretical conditions for
calculations nor the necessary materials for
manufacture were available.
Not until 1917 did Fr. Dubois develop the
theory on which the calculation of the disc
spring is based in his dissertation The
Strength of the Conical Shell [1] at the ETH in
Zurich. However, it still took several de ca des
until this was adopted in practice. For a long
time disc springs continued to be cal cu la ted
if at all in accordance with the theory of
the fl at perforated plate. Then in 1936 two
Americans, Almen and Lszl, published a
simplifi ed method of calculation [2] which allowed
a quick and practically correct me thod
for calcu lating disc springs.
As these
6
Introduction
Features of the
Disc Spring
Compared with other types of springs, the
disc spring has a number of advantageous
properties, of which the following should be
named:
1. Very large loads can be sup por ted
with a small in stal la ti on space.
2. Depending on the dimensional relationships,
its spring cha rac te ri stic can
be designed to be linear or re gres si ve
and with a sui ta ble ar ran ge ment also
progressive.
3. Due to the nearly unlimited number of
possible combinations of indi vi du al
disc springs, the characteristic cur ve
and the column length can be further
varied within additional li mits.
4. High service life under dynamic load
if the spring is properly di men sio ned.
5. Provided the permissible stress is
not exceeded, no impermissible re -
laxa ti on occurs.
6. With suitable arrangement, a large
damping effect may be achieved.
7. Stock keeping is minimised, as the
individual spring sizes can be combined
universally.
8. Because the springs are of an annular
shape, force transmission is abso
lutely concentric.
On the basis of these excellent pro per ties,
the disc spring has been adopted in nearly all
areas of technology during the last several
decades.