APPLICATION OF HERTZ ANALYSIS TO THE CONTACT OF SURFACES COVERED BY SOFT METAL FILMS

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Lecturer., Military Technical College, Cairo, Egypt.

Abstract

Understanding of the behaviour of Hertzian contact is basic to the design of the tribological contacts such as rolling bearings, gears and came. This paper describes an investigation of the static contact between a steel ball on a lead plated steel flat. Both the normal approach of thes surfaces and their area of contact have been measured as functions of normal loads and the the thickness of the lead film. It is shown that at high loads all the coated surfaces behaved elastically. It is also shown that the Hertz solution can be applied to calculate both normal approach and contact area when using the suitable value of the elastic modulus. An imperical equation has been given to calculate the equivelent elastic modulus which is shown to be function of both, elastic properties of the contacting surfaces together with the film thickness.