Author(s)

P. Boroumand

Abstract

With the broad industrial applications of curvy-layered structures due to their desirable mechanical properties, contact analysis is no further confined to the single layer half-space media, as originally developed. In the light of this view and along the path towards the mechanical analysis of a thermalized composite structural cable, this paper focuses on the derivation of a normal constitutive “force-deformation” model based on the principles of contact mechanics for layered media in pre-specified temperature scenarios, where both the thermal difference and the heat fluxes are in the game. Applying the Fourier transform method and the Inverse Fourier Convolution algorithm, the final numerical analyses reveal the fact that not only the defined nonlinear spring gets stiffer with a rise in the temperature, but also the deviation from the corresponding layered contact phenomenon in the ambient environment is notably a function of the width of contact.

Keywords

thermalization, contact analysis, nonlinear constitutive model