Elasto-Plastic Asperity Contacts of Layered Media

An elasto-plastic asperity contact model for layered media is developed in the work reported in this paper to analyze the influences of coating-substrate materials on contact when yielding and the strain-hardening properties of materials are taken into account. The finite element method, the initial stiffness method and the mathematical programming technique are employed to solve the model. The von Mises yield criterion is used to determine the inception of plastic deformation. The effects of different layer thickness and different coating-substrate materials on the contact pressure, real area of contact, average gap of rough surface, and stresses in layer and substrate under the elastic-perfectly-plastic and the elasto-plastic contact conditions are numerically investigated and discussed.