A basic theoretical study of the temperature rise in sliding contact with multiple contacts

The objectives of this paper are to develop a theoretical solution for the temperature rise due to sliding contact between surfaces with multiple, interacting asperities and to use this solution to examine the effects of the important contact area and system parameters. A solution based on the Green's function method is developed for the basic problem of two half-space regions in sliding contact with any arbitrarily specified arrangement of rectangular asperities.Studies are conducted to demonstrate the effects of the contact area parameters, namely the number, size, spacing and orientation of the contacts, as well as sliding velocity. Results indicate that the contact temperatures are extremely sensitive to the number and relative spacing between contacts, where subdivision of a single contact into separated pieces significantly reduces the contact temperature rises. The orientation of the contacts relative to the sliding direction is shown to have only a small influence on temperature. The shape of the contacts also has only a small influence, except in the case of contact patches with large aspect ratios where significantly lower surface temperatures can occur. Sliding speed is shown to be extremely important in that increased speed causes both higher temperature levels and greater interaction between contacts due to the convective effect.The current paper is intended to describe the basic solution methodology for calculating temperature rises due to multiple, interacting contacts and to show some fundamental trends for a selected set of regularly arranged contact area distributions.