Deterministic elastic-plastic modelling of rough surface contact including spectral interpolation and comparison to theoretical models

Measured surfaces are populated with an intermediate resolution by a novel method called spectral interpolation. The spectral interpolation method allows for sharp peaks and intermediate points to be smoothed by adding additional nodes while keeping the original surface and spectrum constant. Then, the effects of different resolutions on the area-load relationship are studied by finite element simulation and the results are compared to theoretical models. We find that the slope of the area-load relationship becomes lower as the geometry of the rough surface was smoothed by the spectral interpolation. Additionally, the effects of the tangent modulus and different detection methods in the finite element method are also studied.