Stability of Thermoelastic Contact for the Aldo Model

Abstract

A perturbation method is used to investigate the stability of a simple one-dimensional rod model of thermoelastic contact which exhibits multiple steady-state solutions. A thermal contact resistance is postulated which is a continuous function of the contact pressure or separation. It is found that solutions involving substantial separation and/or contact pressures are always stable, but these are separated by unstable “imperfect contact” solutions in which one of the rods is very lightly loaded or has a very small separation. The results can be expressed in terms of the minimization of a certain energy function.