Study on the Normal Contact Stiffness of Rough Surface in Mixed Lubrication

In this paper, a general contact stiffness model is proposed to study the mixed lubricated contact between a rough surface and a rigid flat plate, which is the equivalent model for the contact between two rough surfaces and is the general case for engineering contact interfaces. The total interfacial contact stiffness is composed of the dry rough surface contact stiffness and the liquid lubricant contact stiffness. The GW model is used for surface topography description and the contact stiffness of a single asperity is derived from the Hertz contact theory. The whole dry rough contact stiffness is obtained by multiple the single asperity contact stiffness with the number of contact asperities, which is derived based on the statistical model. The liquid film stiffness is derived based on a spring model. The stiffness contributions from the asperity contact part and lubricant layer part are separated and analyzed.