Numerical Modeling of Rough Contact between Two Cylinders with Axes Parallel

The present paper represents a study of the effect of surface roughness in elastic-plastic micro contact between two cylinders in contact along their external generatrix by finite element analysis. This is the first study in the micro-scale geometry to analyze this particular contact used in industrial problem of fluid heat tracing. Two types of frictionless contact are investigated numerically. One examines the contact between two random rough cylindrical surfaces with Gaussian statistics for different topographies. The other proposed the contact between sum cylindrical surface which include the roughness and the elasticity of the both rough surfaces into contact, with perfectly smooth rigid cylindrical surface. The construction of sum surface is used in order to simplify the problem of rough contact. A full description of the method and the technical of construction of sum surface is presented. As a result, it was fund a good agreement between the two models. A multiple contact configuration was analysed in the form of cylindrical surface. Numerical results obtained under elastic conditions were also validated by comparison with theoretical solution of Hertz. A sensitivity analysis is presented in order to estimate the random draw of parameters on the results. We present then results showing the effects of roughness on contact parameters. Overall, it is found that the contact parameters are quite sensitive to the roughness parameters in elastic and plastic deformation. Results show that the surface topography has a large influence on the real area of contact. As a result of that, the real contact area ratio increases with the increasing of the displacement until it reaches a maximum limit value on elastic-plastic deformation. This value, less than unity, decreases with increasing roughness.