CONTACT INSTABILITY OF NON-PLANAR ELASTOMERIC SURFACES

Abstract

Contact surfaces between non-planar elastomers widely present in the industrial and biomedical fields, such as corrugated mats and biological fillers. Probing out the mechanical instability of these contact surfaces could greatly contribute to the efficiency, safety and durability of the related structures. In this paper, we numerically studied the contact instability of non-planar elastomeric surfaces with typical projections (i.e., circular and triangle projections) by proposing an instability criterion and using the finite element method. Moreover, we studied the effects of several key factors (e.g., the geometrical parameters and the friction coefficients of the surfaces) on the critical force of the mechanical instability. It is found that with comparable geometric sizes, the surface with circular projections is more effective to enhance the contact stability than that with triangle projections. A larger slope and curvature radius result in weaker stability while a larger friction coefficient plays a positive role for the stability. However, with increasing friction coefficient, the maximum force presents smaller and smaller changes and further improvement of contact stability mainly depends on the changes of the number of projections. These investigations may improve the understanding of the mechanical instability of non-planar elastomeric surfaces and contribute to achieve better designs of related structures.