Roughness Effects in Thermo-Mechanically Loaded Contacts

A recently developed thermo-mechanical model was used to investigate the influence of surface roughness characteristics on the maximum contact temperature rise as well as shear stresses in rough surface contacts subjected to normal and tangential loading. In order to identify prevailing trends clearly the surfaces were modelled as having idealised sinusoidal roughness. Following a brief description of the numerical model, results are presented to illustrate the dependence of contact temperature and stresses on roughness parameters such as wavelength and amplitude as well as the contact Peclet number. An attempt is made to explain the observed trends in terms of variation in predicted pressure distribution and real contact areas for different surfaces.