Calculation of contact pressure in conformal contact

Abstract

A method of calculation for contact pressure in conformal contacts was studied. In elastic contact analysis, the Hertzian theory is well known. But the Hertzian theory is hardly applicable to a problem of an extreme conformal contact condition, such as ball joints or journal bearings. Providing a relation between contact pressure and interference depth of the original configurations, contact pressure was calculated and compared with the FEM analysis. This method is analogous to the calculation of load distribution in radial ball bearings. The accuracy of the method was numerically evaluated by simple problems. It was confirmed that the accuracy of this method for contact pressure was enough for practical use.