Stress analysis during the mechanical contact of elastic materials

Abstract

In this work, the stresses are calculated in the region of contact of two elastic materials, through the finite element method. These results are compared with equations of Hertz. Two contact systems are considered to analyze, cylinder against cylinder and cylinder against plane. To define these systems is performed model in two dimensions. For the analysis, it considers both systems as a contact nonconforming. To validate the modelresults they are compared with theoretical values.
It was observed that the results of the simulations converge rapidly to a value which is stabilized as the mesh size in the contact region, the minimum value of the elements used is 0.1 mm. Furthermore, comparison of the finite element method with the analytical equations found that the relative errors in measurements contact pressure have values between 1 and 2 percent. The relative errors in measurements for the half-width of the contact area reach values of up to 2 percent with respect to the value determined from the equations of Hertz.