Finite Element Based Contact Analysis of Fractal Surfaces – Effect of Varying Elastic Modulus

The present finite element simulation describes the influence of varying elastic modulus in a non-adhesive frictionless bulk deformation contact between isotropic self-affine fractal surface and a rigid flat covering elastic, elastic-plastic and the plastic region. The nature of rough surface is non-stationary and random. The scale independent characteristics can only describe the multi scale behavior of the rough surfaces. Fractal geometry describes the disordered chaos multitude behavior of rough surfaces in an ordered manner through two characteristics namely; fractal dimension D and fractal roughness G. Three-dimensional rough surfaces are generated using a modified two-variable Weierstrass-Mandelbrot function with specific fractal parameters in ANSYS environment. The present findings are validated with the experimental results available in the literature.