A Method for Determining the Asperity Distribution of Contacting Rough Surfaces

Abstract

The Greenwood and Williamson (1966) model is an elegant and often-cited paradigm for predicting the load-displacement behavior of contacting rough surfaces given the height distribution of the contacting asperities. By use of an inverse technique and available load-displacement data, this work provides an alternative method to determine the asperity distribution directly from topographic measurement and subsequent data reduction. This method produces distributions that are consistent with the Greenwood and Williamson representation of the load-displacement data and demonstrates how the asperity height distribution can evolve with loading.