2D FEA study of Hertzian contact stress between two cylindrical bodies

Abstract

Abstract Power transmission machine elements such as gears, cams, and bearings, are subjected to Hertzian contact stress. Ansys is a widely used FEA tool to analyze the Hertzian contact stress problems. In this work, 2D FEA analysis was carried out to understand two cylindrical contacts stress behaviour under plane strain, plane stress, and plane stress with 100 mm thickness using ANSYS 16.2. An initial convergence study was carried out to obtain the optimum mesh and compared with the theoretical value. The simulation was performed using the optimum mesh size between two identical cylinders with appropriate boundary conditions and a load of 5000 N. Von-mises stress, and normalized stress was plotted under plane strain, plane stress, and plane stress with 100 mm thickness. Subsurface stress was observed under plane strain condition, whereas surface stress was achieved from the plane stress and plane stress with 100 mm thickness. The behaviour of a normalized stress plot for plane stress condition is almost similar when compared to the plane strain condition. A gradual decrement in normalized stresses was observed with an average slope range of 2.37–12.38 for both plane strain as well as plane stress conditions. In contrast, rapid decrement in normalized stresses was observed with an average slope range of 15.96–32.85 under plane stress with 100 mm thickness.