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The influence of fractal dimension in the microcontact of three-dimensional elastic-plastic fractal surfaces

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Abstract

Microcontact affects the fabrication and assembly of MEMS/NEMS system, the contact between thin film microcavity and microcantilever beam, and the motion of microstructure. In this work, in the microcontact of three-dimensional elastic-plastic Weierstrass-Mandelbrot (W-M) fractal surfaces, influence of fractal dimension was studied based on a comprehensive contact model. With increasing fractal dimension, maximum microcontact force in the plastic deformation zone shows parabolic change; comparably, the intermediate force in elastic zone parabolically varies. For both the forces, the minimum values are obtained when the fractal dimension is 2.5. Besides, in the plastic deformation zone, the real contact areas increase with the fractal dimension. Experiments were completed to compare with the numerical analysis. The results show that the simulated contact force curve is in line with the experimental load curve when Young’s modulus E and hardness H are equal to the actual measured values. Nevertheless, it will greatly deviate from the experimental load curve when E and H differ from the measured values.

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Funding

The authors would like to thank the financial supports by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51505368, No.91748207), 973 Program (No. 2015CB057402), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2017M613114), Shaanxi Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2017BSHEDZZ69), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. xjj2016011, No. xjj2017077), the fund of the State Key Lab of Digital Manufacturing Equipment & Technology (No. DMETKF2016006), Open Foundation of the State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power and Mechatronic Systems (GZKF-201617), Research Project of State Key Laboratory of Mechanical System and Vibration (MSV201813), and 111 Program (No. B12016). We also appreciate the support from the International Joint Laboratory for Micro/Nano Manufacturing and Measurement Technologies.

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Correspondence to Chenying Wang.

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Lin, Q., Meng, Q., Wang, C. et al. The influence of fractal dimension in the microcontact of three-dimensional elastic-plastic fractal surfaces. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 104, 17–25 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-018-1660-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-018-1660-3

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