Visco-elastic Contact Analysis And Its Applications In Water Lubricated Rubber Bearings

This paper studies the contact mechanics behavior of polymers’ visco-elasticmaterial. Through the characteristics such as the creep and stress relaxation analyses,the corresponding mathematical, mechanical model were established. The newdeveloped algorithm could effectively avoid the drawbacks of the analytical method andnumerical solution method, and could fast calculate complex surface visco-elasticcontact problem.A numerical approach based on semi-analytical method is proposed for thevisco-elastic. The effect of creep is considered by using results from previous step. Thecontact solver is based on minimization of complementary energy, which integratedwith the conjugate gradient method （CGM） algorithm and the Fast Fourier Transform（FFT） technique for improving numerical efficiency. This method can overcome thedisadvantages of the analytical method can only solve simple boundary conditions, aswell as wholly numerical method of inefficient calculation. Especially, it reflects thesuperiority when it was used in the rough surface contact problem. The method isverified by comparing it to the analytical solutions for the three-parameter solid-and theMaxwell models.Furthermore, the SAM was employed for calculating the contact of the roughsurfaces, i.e., the single asperity, transversal ridge and sine wave. By analyzing textureson the pressure and stress, revealing visco-elastic material destruction mechanism andachieve the performance optimization of the contact parts. The conclusion is that thesurface textures significantly affect the contact pressure and the contact area; a givenmoment, the smooth surface has the maximum contact area; as time increase, thecontact pressure is reduced while the contact area increases. Next, the visco-elasticcontact behavior of the typical machined surface, i.e., abrasive machining surface, wasinvestigated. Results show that the maximum pressure occurs on the peak of theasperity, and the pressure is influenced by the distributed asperities. Further the contactareas are disconnected; however, the disconnected regions are decreased with the lapseof timeFinally, the algorithm is used to analyze the visco-elastic contact problem of waterlubricated rubber bearings, where the line contact model is employed to represent therubber contact. The coefficient of the water lubricated rubber bearing with visco-elastic material, including the surface shape, vulcanized results and loads was studied. It alsoobtained the results of the characteristics and variation of contact pressure distributionunder different conditions. The results show that the modulus is increased significantlyfor the vulcanized rubber, and the bearing can effectively improve the load and wearresistance, which ensures that the equipment operate normally under the extremeworking conditions. In addition, the flat water lubricated rubber bearing can afford largepressure, which is better than that of the concave bearing.