It is well known that even under very heavy loads the hills on rough surfaces are not completely flattened. Many workers have advanced possible reasons for this remarkable persistence of the surface asperities. The most commonly advocated mechanisms are examined, and it is demonstrated that none of them provides an adequate explanation of the phenomenon. The plastic indentation of a flat by a hard ball is then studied, and the real area of contact is measured directly using high resolution profilometry. It is concluded that asperity persistence does not depend on the particular metal in contact. Nor is it an intrinsic property of the individual hills on the surface; there is no evidence that work hardening during the crushing of asperities can form a hardened surface layer which leads to a smaller contact area, as is commonly supposed. It is shown that, for local indentations, the degree of contact, i. e. the ratio of real to nominal area, is in general independent of the load. Whenever the surface layers are harder than the bulk the degree of contact is typically between one quarter and one third. However, when the indented body has a uniform hardness the degree of contact was found to be accurately equal to one-half.
An empirical methodlogy to estimate a local yield stress in work-hardened surface layers
