Abstract:
Load transfer between components in engineering assemblies often causes very high
localized stresses generally called contact stresses. The contact stresses are highly
concentrated close to the contact region and decrease rapidly in intensity with distance
from the point of contact, so that the region of practical interest lies close to the
contact interface. The nature of stresses arising from the contact between two bodies
is of great importance and attracted the attention of many researchers. But most of
them were analyzed using simple geometries i.e. sphere on plane, sphere on sphere,
and cylinder on cylinder. This work has focused on complicated geometries rather
than simple geometries by considering conical rollers in contact. When two
geometrical and materially identical conical rollers come into contact with each other
under the application of a uniform compressive load in rolling, the contact patch
appears in the form of a trapezoid, in contrast with two cylinders where the contact
area is rectangle. The trapezoid shape of the contact area arises because the radius of
curvature of either cone varies along the axial direction and contact length. So, radius
of curvature will be a function of vertex angle as well as length of the contact, where
in the case of cylindrical contact it is same through out the cross. section of the
contact. The work has also considered tangential loading along with normal loading.
The stress functions have been solved numerically to find stress distribution with
variation of contact geometries. Stress components in different axes have been
investigated with variation of contact geometries for both normal and tangential
loading. Half width distribution, pressure distribution and stress distribution along the
length have been also investigated for different vertex angle as well as for different
materials. The validity of numerical results has been done using a commercial finite
element simulating software, Ansys. The results of the numerical technique are found
to be consistent with the finite element simulations in predicting pressure, its
distribution and the contact stresses in conical rollers.
