Thermal creep model of rough fractal surfaces in contact: viscoelastic standard linear solid

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to construct a continuous time series model to study the thermal creep of rough surfaces in contact. Design/methodology/approach - For normal loading, the contact between rough surfaces can often be modeled as the contact of an effective surface with a rigid fiat surface. A solution for the deformation of such equivalent surface, generated using fractal geometry, can be modified. However, in this study only the case of a single rough surface in contact with a rigid flat surface is considered. In the interface, the material is assumed to follow the idealized constitutive viscoelastic standard linear solid (SLS) model. Fractal geometry, through Cantor set theory, is utilized to model the roughness of the surface. Findings - An asymptotic time series power law is obtained, which associates the creep load, the buck temperature and the creep of the fractal surface. Originality/value - This law is only valid as long as the creep is of the size of the surface roughness. The modified model admits an analytical solution for the case when the behavior is linear viscoelastic. The proposed model shows a good agreement when compared with experimental results available in the literature.