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The tangential contact stiffness of cylindrical asperities is investigated using macro- and micro-mechanisms in this study. A microanalysis model is developed and the tangential contact stiffness of elliptically parabolic asperities on the contact surface is determined. The shape influence coefficient of the cylindrical contact is defined, and its rationality is evaluated. The influence of asperity distribution on the rough surface is determined, and the tangential contact stiffness macroanalysis model is constructed based on fractal theory. The mathematical expression to determine the tangential contact stiffness of the macroscopically cylindrical contact is generated, and the effects of influential factors on tangential contact stiffness are explicitly evaluated. Numerical results show that the tan-gential contact stiffness of asperities is determined by several factors, such as material properties, applied loads, fractal dimension, and surface shape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A general contact stiffness model is proposed in this paper to study the contacts between rough surfaces of machined plane joints. The proposed model uses fractal geometry for surface topography description, elastic-plastic deformation of contacting asperities, and size-dependent contact stiffness of microcontacts, where the contact stiffness is derived from Hertz contact theory. Three cast iron specimens are produced from different machining methods (milling, grinding, and scraping), and their rough surface profiles are extracted. The structure function method was used to calculate each profile's fractal dimension and scale coefficient. Both theoretical analysis and experimental results of contact stiffness are obtained for these specimens under different contact loads. The comparison between the theoretical contact stiffness and the experimental results at the interface indicates that the present fractal model for the contact stiffness is appropriate and the theoretical contact stiffness is consistent with the experimental data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]