The impact of a rigid circular cylinder on an elastic solid

Abstract

A method is described for approximating to any degree of accuracy the solution of the following problem: An elastic body which is bounded by a plane on one side, but extends to infinity otherwise, is hit by a circular disk of given mass, radius, and initial speed perpendicular to the plane boundary. The whole surface of the disk enters into contact with the elastic body at the same time and stays in contact at all its points from then on. The disk is assumed to be rigid, i.e. it does not allow the particles of the elastic body in the contact area to move relative to each other in a direction perpendicular to the plane boundary. For the relative motion of these particles parallel to the face of the disk several conditions are considered, representing perfect lubrication, various degrees of viscous friction and perfect adherence. With the help of various Mellin transformations a method is indicated which leads to an expansion of the motion in powers of the Laplace transform variable. The case of perfect adherence needs some special consideration, and a simple approximation for the static problem is found. The case of perfect lubrication is then treated in more detail by a different method which replaces the condition of constant normal displacement in the contact area by an equivalent number of requirements for certain averages over the normal displacement in the contact area. The condition of rigidity for the disk is not exactly satisfied, but it is possible to judge the accuracy of the approximation (with the help of asymptotic expansions in the Laplace transform variable) at the initial time, when discrepancies are largest. The concept of ‘mode of vibration’ is introduced. Any transient in the coupled system of elastic body and rigid disk can be described as superposition of modes, each of which is an exponentially damped harmonic oscillation of the coupled system with a frequency and damping constant independent of the particular transient. The motion of the impinging disk is then seen to be dominated mostly by the lowest mode, provided the mass of the disk is not too small. The displacement perpendicular to the boundary outside of the contact area has been calculated. This calculation is not more difficult than the corresponding one in the case of a point-like source at the plane boundary of an elastic solid. Numerical computations were carried out for the case of perfect lubrication with the help of the Elecom digital computer in order to determine the first two modes and their contributions to the motion of the disk. As long as Poisson’s ratio for the elastic solid exceeds 1/4, the results do not depend strongly on the value of Poisson’s ratio. The ratio of the areal mass densities of the disk to the elastic solid is the main parameter of the theory. The shear wave velocity of the elastic solid determines the time scale of the motion.