Elasto-Plastic Coupled Temperature-Displacement Finite Element Analysis of Two-Dimensional Rolling-Sliding Contact With a Translating Heat Source

The present paper, describes a transient translating elasto-plastic thermo-mechanical finite element model to study 2-D frictional rolling contact. Frictional two-dimensional contact is simulated by repeatedly translating a non-uniform thermo-mechanical distribution across the surface of an elasto-plastic half space. The half space is represented by a two dimensional finite element mesh with appropriate boundaries. Calculations are for an elastic-perfectly plastic material and the selected thermo-physical properties are assumed to be temperature independent. The paper presents temperature variations, stress and plastic strain distributions and deformations. Residual tensile stresses are observed. The magnitude and depth of these stresses depends on 1) the temperature gradients and 2) the magnitudes of the normal and tangential tractions.