Dynamic contact interactions of fractal surfaces

Roughness parameters and material properties have significant influence on the static and dynamic properties of a rough surface. In the present paper, fractal surface is generated using the modified two-variable Weierstrass-Mandelbrot function in MATLAB and the same is imported to ANSYS to construct the finite element model of the rough surface. The force-deflection relationship between the deformable rough fractal surface and a contacting rigid flat is studied by finite element analysis. For the dynamic analysis, the contacting system is represented by a single degree of freedom spring mass-damper-system. The static force-normal displacement relationship obtained from FE analysis is used to determine the dynamic characteristics of the rough surface for free, as well as for forced damped vibration using numerical methods. The influence of fractal surface parameters and the material properties on the dynamics of the rough surface is also analyzed. The system exhibits softening property for linear elastic surface and the softening nature increases with rougher topography. The softening nature of the system increases with increase in tangent modulus value. Above a certain value of yield strength the nature of the frequency response curve is observed to change its nature from softening to hardening.