Transient Thermo-Elasto-Plastic Spherical Contact Analyses Considering Effects of Thermal Softening and Heat Partition

Frictional heating leads to the temperature rise, thermal expansion, and the thermo-elasto-plastic deformation, which may be responsible for the failure of components under contact and relative motion. This paper reports the development of a three-dimensional thermo-elasto-plastic contact model of counterformal bodies, which account for the transient heat transfer, temperature-dependent strain hardening behavior of materials, and realistic heat partition between surfaces. An extensive study on the contact of a sliding half-space over a stationary ball is conducted using this model.