Experimental analysis of contact for the indentation of a flat rounded punch

The ‘plane vs. plane’ contact involving flat punches has been the subject of many investigations, even in recent years, mainly due to the crucial role that such components play in phenomena, such as fretting fatigue and indentation tests. While the problem has been deeply approached from a theoretical point of view, there is a noteworthy lack of experimental verifications due to the limited number of laboratory techniques capable of supplying detailed information about contact parameters. In order to make a partial contribution towards gaining an understanding of such problems, this study proposes the investigation of flat rounded punch contact with an ultrasound-based technique, which exploits the properties of ultrasonic waves to be differently reflected by a contact interface depending on its stress state. A suitable setup was built in such a way as to ensure a good level of control of contact conditions, and the interface was scanned with a high-frequency ultrasonic transducer so as to acquire the reflection data. While the graphic processing of the ultrasonic coefficient of reflection may easily be displayed as a ‘contact map’, the quantitative accuracy of the method was also investigated by comparing experimental results with those obtained from a Finite Element model of the system. The results show a good level of agreement between the two approaches, thus confirming that the ultrasonic technique can be effectively employed to investigate many contact problems which to date have never (or scarcely) been experimentally validated.