Parametric study on stressed volume and its application to the quantification of rolling contact fatigue performance of heterogeneous material

This research explores the influence of distributed inhomogeneities and surface asperities on the stressed volume of heterogeneous material in contact with a sphere. The recently developed modeling method for solving rough-surface contact problems involving distributed inhomogeneities, incorporated with FFT algorithms and a mesh differential refinement scheme, is utilized. The effective stressed volume, quantitatively described by effective depth, length and width, is investigated to characterize the rolling-contact-fatigue influence zone in heterogeneous material. Furthermore, a parametric study is conducted for the influences of inhomogeneity distribution and surface roughness on volumetric stress integral in order to understand the rolling contact fatigue performance of particle-laden inhomogeneous materials.