CONTACT FATIGUE is a surface-pitting-type failure commonly found in ball or roller bearings. This type of failure can also be found in gears, cams, valves, rails, and gear couplings. Contact fatigue has been identified in metal alloys (both ferrous and nonferrous) and in ceramics and cermets. Contact fatigue differs from classic structural fatigue (bending or torsional) in that it results from ...

The atomic force microscope (AFM) has evolved to the point of enabling the resolution of sub-nanometer features on a surface. Rather than artificially generated surfaces, high-resolution AFM images of polycrystalline silicon can be used to characterize the contact forces in microand nanoscopic devices. In this work, finite element models of characteristic features of the polysilicon surface are...

A mixed formulation for a Tresca frictional contact problem in linear elasticity is considered in the context of boundary integral equations, which is later extended to Coulomb friction . The discrete Lagrange multiplier, an approximation of the surface traction on the contact boundary part, is a linear combination of biorthogonal basis functions. In case of curved elements, these are the solut...