Liquid gases in industry

Shrink fitting
W. J. G r a n t

Many engineering sub-assemblies involve tightly fitting an

inner component into an outer part so that relative motion
is prevented or that force may be transmitted from one part
to the other. Examples are shafts in wheels and rotors;
liners in cylinders; bushes and bearings in housings; valve
seats and guides in engine blocks.
Design methods for assembling such parts include pressing,
welding, keying, screwing, and shrink-fitting. Shrink-fitting
is specially attractive from both economic and technical
viewpoints, in that component machining is minimal
(cylindrical turning, with no keyways, cotters, threads, etc
being required), and assembly is easy and requires little
or no specialized equipment.
Shrink-fitting was traditionally performed by heating the
outer component to expand the hole therein sufficiently
to "alloweasy fitting of the"inner part. In more recent times,
ready availability of cryogenic refrigerants, in particular
liquid nitrogen, has increased interest in the converse method
in which the inner part is strongly cooled and contracted
sufficiently for easy fitting into the unheated outer part.
The special advantages of cooling inner parts, as against
heating outer parts for shrink fitting, are generally that the
cryogenic method is quick, needs a minimum of special
equipment, and results in minimal metallurgical or other
changes (and often no change at all) in the components
being assembled. These advantages can be reflected in significant economies in using the cryogenic shrink fitting
process.
Procedure

The usual procedure adopted for cryogenic shrink fitting

is direct immersion of the inner components for assembly
in a suitable liquid nitrogen bath until they have reached
the liquid temperature (-196C), as shown by the virtual
cessation of boiling in the liquid.
Liquid nitrogen is particularly suitable as a refrigerant for
shrink fitting. It is very cold and gives a useful amount of
The author is with the British Oxygen Co Ltd, Deer Park Road,

London SW19, UK. Received 15 March 1972.

328

shrinkage. It is inert and free from corrosion, fire, and

toxicity hazards, the only precautions needed in using it
being to avoid its contact with the skin, and to work in a
well ventilated space. It is cheap and readily available everywhere in industrial Britain. The refrigeration effect of
liquid nitrogen in a simple immersion cooling process is
due to the latent heat of vaporization, and amounts to
198 kJ kg 1 .
The time for cooling metal components down to liquid
nitrogen temperature by immersion varies between about
four minutes for a 25 mm diameter shaft to about an hour
for one of 250 mm diameter. Thin section components
such as small bushes and valve seats can be cooled in a
minute or so.
It is possible with a long shaft to cool and shrink an end
only, if a wheel has to be mounted thereon, thus economizing in refrigerant.
Jobs arising for shrink-fitting generally fall into one of two
categories, namely (i) one-off or few-off pieces such as
arise in repair and maintenance work, or in prototype or
highly specialized equipment, often very large in size, and
(ii) repetition production pieces.
For the one-off kind of job, the immersion bath is usually
improvised from available low-cost material, cheapness
being as important as efficiency. In the case of repetition
shrink-fitting, it is worth paying more attention to the
efficiency of the apparatus in minimizing handling labour
costs and refrigerant consumption.
In the one-off job, the shaft and hole diameters can be
measured and the interference exactly known for calculation of tightness of fit. It is also possible and sometimes
desirable to measure the cooled shaft diameter to confirm
calculated shrinkage.
On the other hand, with production work measurement of
individual components is normally not possible, and shaft/
hole diameters vary within tolerance ranges. It is essential
to ensure that largest-shaft/smallest-hole pairs have enough
clearance for assembly, and that smallest-shaft/largest-hole
pairs have enough interference for the required tightness of
fit.

CRYOGENICS . AUGUST 1972