A NUMERICAL-METHOD OF ANALYSIS FOR 3 BODIES IN ELASTIC FRICTIONAL CONTACT

This paper describes the development of a modified contact algorithm based on the flexibility matrix approach for the analysis of three bodies in elastic frictional contact. This analysis reduces four nodal- displacement equations of potential contact nodes in three bodies to two equa tions by satisfying the compatibility condition of displacement and force of equilibrium. The third contact surface is considered necessary for computing contact pressure between tire and road, or wheel and rail, which must be loaded through an additional contact between shaft and tire/wheel. In view of the fact that the common normal/tangential direction of contacting surfaces may vary during the loading process, a method of determining the common normal direction between contacting surfaces is proposed and incor porated into the modified algorithm. In order to ease computational procedures, two levels of operation are adopted, namely, primitive level and higher level. The primitive level is designed to compute the nodal reactional forces and rigid body motions whereas the latter is designed for the determination of common normal/ tangential directional and contact pressure. The algorithm is applied to solve the contact pressure for the two body assembly of a cylinder/flat surface block and for the three body assembly of a shaft/disk/flat plate. The computed and measured results are compared and found to achieve excellent agreement, veri fying the validity of the proposed algorithm for solving contact problems of practical engineering interest. © 1990, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.