An elastodynamic model of frictional contact and its influence on the dynamics of a workpiece-fixture system

A model to predict the dynamics of a work-piece-fixture system has been developed based on the equivalency of the dynamic frictional contact problem with a nonlinear friction law to that of variation inequality problem. Nonlinear finite element method has been employed to solve the problem. A series of experiments under various fixture configurations were conducted on a modular future test-bed to determine the dynamic characteristics of the workpiece-fixture system. Model predictions of the dynamic characteristics have been compared to those obtained from the experiments and are found to be in good agreement. It was found that frictional sliding contact at the workpiece-fixture interfaces provides damping to the system and that the nature (if this contact and level of damping are highly dependent on contact forces developed through clamping. Clamping sequence was also found to be important in determining dynamic characteristics.