Mechanical Properties of Solids and Real Area of Contact
This chapter covers how the material around contacting asperities deforms when two surfaces touch and the resulting stresses in the materials. The beginning portion of the chapter is devoted to how these stresses and deformations originate at the atomic level. Next, discussed are the elastic and plastic deformations that can occur when a single asperity contacts a flat surface, such as a Hertzian contact. The discussion of plasticity leads naturally to the discussion of hardness. A major portion of this chapter is devoted to estimating the solid–solid contact area between rough contacting surfaces, which can be due to both elastic and plastic deformations. This discussion of contact area is centered around the Greenwood and Williamson model and the Persson theory of the contact mechanics of rough surfaces.