Authors:
Ignacio Cueva
1
;
Miguel Ángel Ramírez
1
;
Carlos Gabriel Figueroa
2
;
Hadassa Amelia Juárez
1
and
Rafael Schouwenaars
1
Affiliations:
1
Facultad de Ingeniería, Departamento de Materiales y Manufactura, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Coyocacán, 04510 and México.
;
2
Facultad de Ingeniería, Departamento de Materiales y Manufactura, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Via de la Innovación 410, PIIT Apodaca, Nuevo Leon and Mexico.
Keyword(s):
Spark Erosion, Surface Roughness, Load-Displacement Curve, Contact Measurement, Finite Elements.
Abstract:
Spark erosion is a convenient process to produce dies with complex shapes from hard tool materials used under severe contact conditions. A controlled surface roughness can be produced by systematic variation of the milling parameters. This is used in the present work to prepare surfaces for contact mechanics testing and simulation, as will be shown by a newly developed method which performs between contact measurements and finite element simulations of experimentally characterised rough surfaces. In the experiment, the surface roughness of the tool steel is measured by means of optical profilometry. Using an instrumented indentation stage, contact is made with a spherical surface and the force-displacement curve measured. The surface geometry is measured again to detect the effect of plastic deformation. To execute the numerical simulation, the measured surface topography is transferred, one on one, to a finite element mesh with 237169 surface nodes. The method allows to perform prec
ise simulation of the contact of real surfaces, instead of approximate or numerically simulated ones, limited only by the spatial resolution of the measurement.
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