Contact mechanics: contact area and interfacial separation from small contact to full contact

By C. Yang, B. Persson. 2008

241 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present a molecular dynamics study of the contact between a rigid solid with a randomly rough surface and an elastic block with a flat surface. The numerical calculations mainly focus on the contact area and the interfacial separation from small contact (low load) to full contact (high load). For a small load the contact area varies linearly with the load and the interfacial separation depends logarithmically on the load. For a high load the contact area approaches the nominal contact area (i.e. complete contact), and the interfacial separation approaches zero. The numerical results have been compared with analytical theory and experimental results. They are in good agreement with each other. The present findings may be very important for soft solids, e.g. rubber, or for very smooth surfaces, where complete contact can be reached at moderately high loads without plastic deformation of the solids.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Mechanics of Materials, Surfaces, Coatings and Films

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/52b3c363d083ee76be15f9154e44b2b29fb0e2dd

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. Andreas Almqvist
2. N. Prodanov
3. Carlos Campañá
4. B. Persson
5. Kellar Autumn
6. Giuseppe Carbone

In Mechanics of Materials

1. Andreas Almqvist
2. N. Prodanov
3. Carlos Campañá
4. B. Persson
5. Giuseppe Carbone
6. Kellar Autumn
7. C. Putignano
8. G. Demelio

In Surfaces, Coatings and Films

1. Carlos Campañá
2. Andreas Almqvist
3. N. Prodanov
4. B. Persson
5. Kellar Autumn

Citations in the corpus

• Interfacial separation between elastic solids with randomly rough surfaces: Comparison between theory and numerical techniques (2011, methodology): “The contact mechanics formalism developed by Persson (2001, 2006, 2007) and Yang and Persson (2008) is based on studying the interface between two contacting solids at different magnifications z.”
• Modeling and simulation in tribology across scales: An overview (2018, unknown): “Meanwhile, an improvement in Persson's theory was introduced to take into account partial contacts in a more rigorous way [142], yielding results that are much closer to numerical solutions.”