Determining the characteristics of contact interaction between structural elements with varied properties of surface layers

The object of this study is the stressed-strained state of contacting elements of close-shaped machine-building structures. The presence and flexibility of surface layers and coatings are modeled. There are cases of the matching shape of the contacting surfaces of bodies, as well as the perturbation of the shape of these surfaces. The task being solved relates to the fact that the analysis methods of such bodies contact interaction are not yet sufficiently developed. It was established that for the case of the matching shape of contacting surfaces, the contact area does not depend on the level of loads. In this case, the contact pressure distribution is proportional to the operating load. Such features of the solution do not depend on the properties of the materials of surface layers. A different case is when the shape of the contacting surfaces of bodies is disturbed. In particular, it was established that the properties of the materials of surface layers exert a strong influence on the shape and dimensions of bodies contact area, as well as on the distribution of contact pressure (the difference is 1.5–2.5 times or more). The theory of variational inequalities is used to model the stressed-strained state of contacting bodies. As a result, the problem about contact interaction of bodies with surfaces of close shape is reduced to the problem of minimizing the modified energy functionality. The minimization is carried out on a set of distributions of displacements, which describes conditions of bodies not penetrating each other. The finite element method is used to discretize the problem of determining the stressed-strained state of contacting bodies. The parametric model built makes it possible to determine the stressed-strained state of contacting bodies when the disturbance of the nominal shape of the bodies and the properties of their surface layers is varied