CONTACT INTERACTION OF BODIES ALONG CONGRUENT SURFACES.

The contact interaction of complex-profile elements of machine-building structures is in many cases a factor that determines the performance, durability, load capacity and other characteristics of the product as a whole. The paper describes a variational formulation of the problem of contact interaction of bodies. The purpose of the work is to improve the variational formulation of the problem of the contact interaction of elastic-plastic bodies under perturbances in the shape of nominally matching contact surfaces and the properties of the surface layers of the material. The contact of bodies along congruent surfaces is studied. In addition, the modification of these surfaces is considered. The problem is reduced to a variational inequality. The roughness of the surface layers of contacting bodies is taken into account. Plastic deformations of these bodies' materials are also taken into account. It was established that the distribution of contact pressure is significantly uneven. It was also found that by modifying the geometric shape of the contacting surfaces, it is possible to achieve a reduction in the level of contact pressure. In addition, a similar effect is observed when reducing the contact roughness of the surface layers of the materials of the contacting bodies. In the presence of a set of factors taken into account (disturbance of nominally coincident surfaces, influence of surface layers' roughness and elastic-plastic deformation of the materials of the contacting bodies), the resulting effect exceeds those of each of the effects. Therefore, by means of certain constructive and technological measures, it is possible to significantly improve the conditions of contact interaction between bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]