Anisotropic Contact and Wear Simulation Using Boundary Elements

Abstract

Wear is present in all mechanical interface interaction problems –contact, fretting, orrolling-contact–, and it is one of the main reasons for inoperability in mechanical components. Thepresented work is a review of recent research carried out by the authors [1, 2, 3]. A boundary-element-based methodology to compute anisotropic wear on 3D contact, fretting, or rolling-contact conditionsis presented. Damage on the geometries of the solids and the contact pressures evolution under or-thotropic tribological properties can be predicted using this contact framework, where the formulationuses the Boundary Element Method to compute the elastic inuence coefcients. Contact problem isbased on an Augmented Lagrangian formulation, and restrictions fullment is established by a set ofprojection functions. The boundary element anisotropic wear formulation presented is illustrated withsome examples, in which some studies about the inuence of anisotropic wear on contact variablesevolution are shown.