Prediction of subsurface stress in elastic perfectly plastic rough components

Understanding and anticipating the effects of surface roughness on subsurface stress in the design phase can help ensure that performance and life requirements are satisfied. One approach used to address this problem is to simulate contact between digitized real, machined surfaces, and then analyze the predicted subsurface stress field. Often, elastic-perfectly plastic contact models are used in these simulations because of their relative computational efficiency. Reported here is an analysis of the magnitude and location of maximum stress predicted using an elastic-perfectly plastic model. Trends are identified which then enable estimation of the upper bound of the simulation results based on surface discretization, operating conditions, and material properties. These estimations can be used as an effective and efficient tool for rapid prediction of maximum subsurface stress in real surface contact.     

Elastic–plastic adhesive contact of rough surfaces based on plastic asperity concept

The paper describes an analysis of adhesive contact between rough surfaces with small-scale surface asperities using an elastic–plastic model of contact deformation based on fictitious plastic asperity concept developed by Abdo and Farhang [Int. J. Non-Linear Mech. 40 (2005) 495]. The model considers simultaneous occurrence of elastic and plastic behaviours for an asperity. The well-established elastic adhesion index and plasticity index are used to consider the different contact conditions that arise as a result of varying load and material parameters. The load-separation behaviour for different combinations of these parameters is obtained. Comparison with previous elastic–plastic model that was based on elastic-then-plastic assumption is made showing significant differences.     

Elastic–plastic adhesive contact of rough surfaces with asymmetric distribution of asperity heights

The elastic–plastic adhesive contact of rough surfaces is extended to include asymmetric distribution of asperity heights using the Weibull distribution with skewness as the key parameter to characterize asymmetry. The well-established elastic adhesion index and plasticity index are used to consider the different conditions that arise as a result of varying load and material parameters. The loading and unloading behaviour for different combinations of adhesion index, plasticity index and skewness values are obtained as functions of mean separation between the surfaces. It is seen that surfaces with negative skewness experience higher adhesion compared to surfaces with positive or zero skewness.     

粗糙表面滑动摩擦接触模型研究的进展

对近年来国内外粗糙表面模型的进展进行了概述,根据粗糙表面模型类型的不同,分为粗糙表面和平面接触模型以及双粗糙表面接触模型,在各自模型中按照静载和滑动接触类型的研究进展进行表述,并提出了一些目前研究中遇到的热力耦合的问题以及将来双粗糙分形表面模型的发展.     

Contact mechanics of rough surfaces in tribology: multiple asperity contact

Contact modeling of two rough surfaces under normal approach and with relative motion is carried out to predict real area of contact and surface and subsurface stresses affecting friction and wear of an interface. When two macroscopically flat bodies with microroughness come in contact, the contact occurs at multiple asperities of arbitrary shapes, and varying sizes and heights. Deformation at the asperity contacts can be either elastic and/or elastic-plastic. If a thin liquid film is present at the interface, attractive meniscus forces may affect friction and wear. Historically, statistical models have been used to predict contact parameters, and these generally require many assumptions about asperity geometry and height distributions. With the advent of computer technology, numerical contact models of 3-D rough surfaces have been developed, particularly in the past decade, which can simulate digitized rough surfaces with no assumptions concerning the roughness distribution. In this article, a comprehensive review of modeling of multiple-asperity contacts in dry and wet conditions is presented. Contact models for homogeneous and layered, elastic and elastic-plastic solids with and without tangential loading are presented. The models reviewed in this paper fall into two groups: (a) analytical solutions for surfaces with well-defined height distributions and asperity geometry and (b) numerical solutions for real surfaces with asperities of arbitrary shape and varying size and height distributions. Implications of these models in friction and wear studies are discussed. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Fractal prediction model of thermal contact conductance of rough surfaces

The thermal contact conductance problem is an important issue in studying the heat transfer of engineering surfaces,which has been widely studied since last few decades,and for predicting which many theoretical models have been established.However,the models which have been existed are lack of objectivity due to that they are mostly studied based on the statistical methodology characterization for rough surfaces and simple partition for the deformation formats of contact asperity.In this paper,a fractal prediction model is developed for the thermal contact conductance between two rough surfaces based on the rough surface being described by three-dimensional Weierstrass and Mandelbrot fractal function and assuming that there are three kinds of asperity deformation modes:elastic,elastoplastic and fully plastic.Influences of contact load and contact area as well as fractal parameters and material properties on the thermal contact conductance are investigated by using the presented model.The investigation results show that the thermal contact conductance increases with the increasing of the contact load and contact area.The larger the fractal dimension,or the smaller the fractal roughness,the larger the thermal contact conductance is.The thermal contact conductance increases with decreasing the ratio of Young’s elastic modulus to the microhardness.The results obtained indicate that the proposed model can effectively predict the thermal contact conductance at the interface,which provide certain reference to the further study on the issue of heat transfer between contact surfaces.     

On the elastic contact of rough surfaces: Numerical experiments and comparisons with recent theories

Some numerical experiments are conducted for studying the decrease of the elastic contact area in the elastic contact of fractal random surfaces when adding components of roughness of progressively smaller wavelengths. In particular, Fourier and Weierstrass random series are used, and a recent accurate and efficient method developed by the authors is used, involving superpositions of overlapping triangles. Some comparisons are made using two recent theories, that of Ciavarella et al. published in 2000 on the deterministic Weierstrass fractal profile, and that of Persson published in 2001 on random generic contact. We show that both theories tend to underpredict the contact area by a significant (and similar) factor in these representative cases in the region of light loads (partial contact), where the non-linearities of the contact mechanics are not included in neither of the formulations. In Persson's theory case, the discrepancy is particularly large at high fractal dimensions of the profile, where in theory the numerical experiments should be more closely reproducing a true Gaussian process. The Ciavarella et al. “Archard-like” theory, is only accurate when the parameter γ (the ratio of successive wavelengths) is unrealistically large. However, we only tested the Ciavarella et al. theory in the simplified “Hertzian approximation” form assuming partial contact at the peaks of contact, although we don’t expect the full version to improve dramatically the results.     

Elastic/plastic contact of surfaces considering ellipsoidal asperities of work-hardening multi-phase materials

The importance of the plasticity index for defining the degree of elastic and plastic deformation of surface asperities is described. Some experimental validation of the argument is provided and the method is extended to cover the case of ellipsoidal asperity contacts and the effect of work-hardening for a general asperity height probability distribution. It is also shown how the model may be applied to study the behaviour of multi-phase composites. The arguments are based on Hertzian contacts without tractions but may be used with reasonable confidence for contacts where the coefficient of friction is less than 0.1.     

Frictionally-excited thermoelastic contact of rough surfaces

Frictional sliding contact between two elastically similar half-planes, one of which has a sinusoidally wavy surface, is studied in the full-contact regime. The steady-state regime is evaluated, within the limits imposed by the well-known phenomenon of thermo-elastic instability (TEI). TEI gives a critical speed whose value depends on the wavelength of the perturbation, and above which the perturbation itself grows arbitrarily with time. It is found that the TEI critical speed, V_cr, is clearly identified by the steady-state solution only in the special and limiting case when the flat half-plane is non-conductor; in that case, V_cr is the speed for which the steady-state predicts infinite amplification. In all other cases, V_cr (appropriate to the wavelength of the profile) does not correspond to infinite amplification, nor to the maximum one, V_M. In the limiting case of thermoelastically similar materials, not only the system is unconditionally stable (V_cr=∞) for f H₁<0.5, where f is the friction coefficient and H₁ a certain thermoelastic constant, but the regime at the maximum amplification is also always stable, and arbitrarily large amplification is obtained for f H₁ tending to infinity. However, it is found that in most practical cases of braking systems, V_crV_M, and so the limiting conditions are reached at V_cr. At this speed, the amplification is typically not extremely high.     

Stress history in rolling–sliding contact of rough surfaces

An investigation into the non-Hertzian, elastic stress history, due to the contact of two rough surfaces is presented. A complex evolution of stress is produced whose magnitude and rate depend strongly upon the roughnesses and speeds of the contacting bodies. The key features of the stress fields are illustrated by plots of stress versus time and horizontal distance, for a range of depths and for various contact conditions. The stresses near the surface are many times higher than in an equivalent smooth contact and the roughness on thecounterface generates a moving stress field which, when sliding is present, greatly increases the number of cycles of stress during each passage of the contact. This may account, in part, for the observation that the rolling fatigue life of hard steels declines more rapidly with sliding speed for rough, than for smooth surfaces and suggests that counterface roughness is especially important in determining the fatigue life.     

A numerical model of friction between rough surfaces

This paper describes a computational method to calculate the friction force between two rough surfaces. In the model used, friction results from forces developed during elastic deformation and shear resistance of adhesive junctions at the contact areas. Contacts occur between asperities and have arbitrary orientations with respect to the surfaces. The size and slope of each contact area depend on external loads, mechanical properties and topographies of surfaces. Contact force distribution is computed by iterating the relationship between contact parameters, external loads, and surface topographies until the sum of normal components of contact forces equals the normal load. The corresponding sum of tangential components of contact forces constitutes the friction force. To calculate elastic deformation in three dimensions, we use the method of influence coefficients and its adaptation to shear forces to account for sliding friction. Analysis presented in Appendix A gives approximate limits within which influence coefficients developed for flat elastic half-space can apply to rough surfaces. Use of the method of residual correction and a successive grid refinement helped rectify the periodicity error introduced by the FFT technique that was used to solve for asperity pressures. The proposed method, when applied to the classical problem of a sphere on a half-space as a benchmark, showed good agreement with previous results. Calculations show how friction changes with surface roughness and also demonstrate the method's efficiency.     

Random process model of rough surfaces in plastic contact

The plastic contact of a rough surface and a hard, smooth flat is analyzed by modeling the rough surface as an isotropic, Gaussian, random process. The applicability of this model to the contact of two rough surfaces is discussed, and it is shown that the model is appropriate.It is not necessary to analyze interactions of asperity pairs, with the attendant questions of their misalignment, the shape of their caps, etc. Instead, a model involving the interaction of the continuous surfaces is developed, which implicitly takes into account these geometrical factors, as well as allowing for the possibility of the coalescence of microcontacts as the normal pressure is increased.Approximate relations between the density of finite contact patches, their mean area and mean circumference, and the normal pressure/hardness ratio are derived. These relations depend not only on the density and height distribution of maxima, but also on the shape of the Power Spectral Density of the surface. Many surfaces of interest are likely to give rise to multiply-connected contact patches at all except very high separations. The density of holes appearing within the contact patches as well as their area is estimated.Results are derived for surfaces that may be partitioned into two components, one with a large r.m.s. value and a narrow roughness spectrum, and the other with a small r.m.s. value and an arbitrary spectrum. For these surfaces, the density of holes at small separations becomes equal to the density of finite contact patches; the area of the holes remains small, however. It is conjectured that for surfaces that may not be partitioned in this manner, conventional models of contact are inapplicable. Specifically, the contact patches are likely to be perforated by holes at all separations, the hole area being a significant fraction of the contact area. Unit events such as the contact or collision of asperities also appear to become meaningless     

Effect of asperity interactions on rough surface elastic contact behavior: Hard film on soft substrate

An improved elastic micro-contact model of rough surfaces accounting for asperity interactions is proposed. The contact behavior of a single asperity system is composed of a stiffer hemi-spherical asperity deformation and bellowing softer substrate deformation, which is then extended to rough surface contact including asperity interactions. Using the solution of substrate deformation, normal positions of individual asperities are adjusted during quasi-static contact, from which surface interactive forces are obtained. Analytical simulations are performed using the proposed rough surface contact model, whose results are compared to Greenwood-Williamson-based models and with experimental measurements.     

Mechanisms of elastic contact and friction between rough surfaces

The mechanisms of elastic contact and friction between two rough surfaces were analysed, assuming that the surface asperities were spherical, at least near their summits, and that they contacted elastically. It was found that the real contact area and the number of contact spots are approximately proportional to the load, whereas the mean area of contact spots and the mean pressure at the contact areas are almost independent of load. The frictional force F is almost equal to sA_r, where s is the shearing strength at the contact area and A_r is the real contact area. The experimental results using Pyrex glass specimens agreed within experimental limits with the theoretical results.     

An elastic–plastic contact model of ellipsoid bodies

A theoretical model for the elastic–plastic contact of ellipsoid bodies is presented in this paper. Relation of the contact parameters, such as the mean contact pressure, the contact area and the contact load as a function of the contact interference are modeled in the three different contact regimes: elastic, elastic–plastic and fully plastic. The model is verified by experimental results and is compared with published theoretical models. Very good agreement between the present model and the experimental results are found compared to the prediction of the other contact models.     

两弹塑性接触粗糙表面的严格解析解

GW干接触模型存在5个缺陷。当相糙峰高度的概率密度为Gauss分布时,给出了数学期望接触点数、总接触面积、总载荷、总电导的严格解析解,采用软件Maple计算了抛物柱面函数。实例计算表明接触点数与载荷近似成凸弧形直线正比例关系;量纲一的间距是联系接触点数、总接触面积、总载荷、总电导的纽带,它依赖名义压应力,但对名义压应力的变化不敏感;接触面积与载荷很接近直线正比例关系,在弹性接触条件下存在一个准弹性接触硬度,接触压应力等于准弹性接触硬度,名义面积对接触面积几乎无影响。     

Thermomechanical contact homogenization with random rough surfaces and microscopic contact resistance

We extend an earlier computational thermomechanical contact homogenization framework [Temizer ?, Wriggers P. International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering 2010; 83:27-58] to random rough surfaces generated through the random-field model based on the concepts of ensemble averaging and sample enlargement towards the effective limit. Additionally, the homogenization theory is revisited in order to incorporate thermal dissipation at the microscopic contact interface within a thermodynamically consistent approach that preserves dissipation across the scales. Large-scale three-dimensional computations were performed to demonstrate the effectiveness and feasibility of the computational framework for an accurate characterization of the macroscopic thermomechanical response of rough surfaces in contact.     

Basic principles of rough surface contact analysis using numerical methods

A detailed account of the principles involved in using numerical elastic contact techniques on digitized measurements from rough surfaces is presented in relation to two- and three-dimensional topography data. The main results of such analyses are shown to include the detailed interface geometry and the subsequent contact pressure distribution involved. Methods of defining the resulting sub-surface stresses created by this contact pressure distribution are also presented for static normal loading, and for the case of a normal load in the presence of a frictional surface shear. The problems posed in dealing with plastic asperity contacts are also discussed, together with an outline of how the numerical methods described have been modified further to allow analysis of rough layered bodies of dissimilar materials, thus offering a very useful design tool for surface coatings.     

Limits of applicability of elastic contact models of rough surfaces

Recent stochastic models for analyzing the contact of rough surfaces assume that the asperities are microhertzian, i.e. that they can be approximated as second-order surfaces in the vicinity of contact points, and that the asperities deform elastically. Using a plane strain solution from the literature for a sinusoidally corrugated half-space, the range of validity of these assumptions is shown to be related to the mean square surface slope and the macrocontact pressure. By extension to random surfaces characterized by a one-dimensional spectral density function an interval on the surface spatial frequency is found over which the asperities deform elastically but without completely flattening. A numerical example is given.     

Evaluation of the real contact areas, pressure distributions and contact temperatures during sliding contact between real metal surfaces

A three-dimensional elastic contact algorithm has been developed to analyse the normal contact problems of bodies having rough surfaces. The algorithm can evaluate the real contact areas and contact pressure distributions using measured surface roughness data.

Following an approximate elastic-plastic contact solution the analysis produces more realistic elastic and plastic contact areas; in addition results of contact pressure distributions can be predicted according to a given maximum plastic limit pressure.

The technique can simulate (in an approximate way) the elastic-plastic sliding contact behaviour in the vicinity of asperities or concentrated contact areas by ignoring the effect of the tangential forces on the vertical displacement.

Assuming a certain sliding speed and a particular coefficient of friction the local temperature distribution due to the heat generation over the real contact areas can also be calculated for 'slow sliding' problems.

The results show the moving real contact areas and the contact temperature fields for an electric spark mechanical steel surface moving over a planed bronze surface. Changes of the rigid body displacement, as well as the average and maximum pressures are also presented during sliding.

The micro-contact or asperity contact behaviour for bodies having large nominal contact area and the macro-contact behaviour for bodies being in 'concentrated contact' are also compared. In the latter case an ideal smooth steel ball was slid over the previously mentioned bronze surface.