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

Abstract

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 small load the contact area varies linearly with the load and the interfacial separation depends logarithmically on the load. For 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 moderate high loads without plastic deformation of the solids.

15 pages, 23 figures

References in corpus (5)

• On the nature of surface roughness with application to contact mechanics, sealing, rubber friction and adhesion
• Contact mechanics for randomly rough surfaces
• Contact mechanics: relation between interfacial separation and load
• A multiscale Molecular Dynamics approach to Contact Mechanics
• How do liquids confined at the nanoscale influence adhesion?

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Theory of adhesion: role of surface roughness
• Theory of the leak-rate of seals
• Capillary adhesion between elastic solids with randomly rough surfaces
• On the elastic energy and stress correlation in the contact between elastic solids with randomly rough surfaces
• The contact of elastic regular wavy surfaces revisited
• Interfacial separation between elastic solids with randomly rough surfaces: comparison of experiment with theory
• Contact mechanics with adhesion: Interfacial separation and contact area
• Master equation approach to friction at the mesoscale