Efficient stress evaluation of stationary viscoelastic rolling contact problems using the boundary element method: Application to viscoelastic coatings

The present work is a contribution towards the development of a new and novel technique to evaluate the contact stresses between linear-viscoelastic cylinders under stationary rolling contact loading. A two-dimensional numerical model is considered using a reference system fixed to the contact zone and including the effects of Coulomb friction between the rolling cylinders. The contact stresses are determined by solving a non-linear system of equations coming from the combination of the discretized boundary element viscoelastic equations and the fulfillment of the contact conditions, expressed using projection functions. The results obtained for viscoelastic rollers are compared with those from other authors for different rolling velocities, showing good agreement and consistency. Finally, some results for viscoelastic coatings are presented and commented.