Fractal modeling of elastic-plastic contact between three-dimensional rough surfaces

Purpose This paper aims to propose a semi-analytical model to investigate the elastic-plastic contact between fractal rough surfaces. Parametric studies have been performed to analyze the dependencies between the contact properties and the scale-independent fractal parameters. Design/methodology/approach A modified two-variable Weierstrass-Mandelbrot function has been used to build the geometrical model of rough surfaces. The computation program was developed using software MATLAB R2015a. The results have been qualitatively validated by the existing theoretical and experimental results in the literature. Findings In most cases, a nonlinear relation between the load and the displacement of the rigid plane is found. Only under the condition of larger loads, an approximate linear relation can be seen for great D and small G values. ( D : fractal dimension and G : fractal roughness). Originality/value The contact model of the cylindrical joints (conformal contact) with radial clearance is constructed by using the fractal theory and the Kogut-Etsion elastic-plastic contact model, which includes purely elastic, elastic-plastic and fully plastic contacts. The present method can generate a more reliable calculation result as compared with the Hertz contact model and a higher calculation efficiency as compared with the finite element method for the conformal contact problem.