Elastic-plastic model for contact of two asperities considering shoulder-shoulder contact

To precisely predict the contact performance of assembly interface in complex mechanical system, an elastic-plastic model considering shoulder-shoulder contact of two asperities is presented, which solves the difficulty in shoulder-shoulder contact modeling of asperity under the assumption of volume conservation in the plastic flow regime. Introducing the equivalent radius of curvature at a contact point between two asperities and considering the distributions of surface roughness and contact pressure, the prediction of contact behaviors can be spread from the asperities to the assembly interface in complicated mechanical system according to the proposed model. The numerical results of estimating contact force with the proposed model and the Elastic-Plastic Model show that both predictions for elastic contact force get coincident but obviously different for purely plastic contact force, and the difference increases with plastic degree. The prediction with the proposed model, compared with that with CEB, approaches to finite element analysis more closely.