Frictional contact analysis of coated axisymmetric bodies using the boundary element method

This paper presents a boundary element analysis of the contact mechanics be tween elastic indenters and other compliant structures with hard coatings o f different properties and thicknesses. Two types of indenter are considere d: spherical and conical. The first produces a non-linear contact problem w hile the latter, used in the soft impresser hardness-testing technique, has a flat tip which results in a conformal type of contact. Frictional condit ions are introduced and partial slip phenomena observed. The relevance of f riction is verified in all cases. An efficient iterative axisymmetric bound ary element formulation has been developed for this purpose, which incorpor ates features such as subregion modelling and a fast solution procedure. Re sults with the two types of indenter are compared with available analytical expressions and a commercial finite element package.