The effect of conduction and convective conditions at interstitial regions on 3D thermoelastic contact problems

Abstract

Contact variables can be greatly affected by small temperature variations occurring in the contact zone and the surrounding areas. So it is essential to take into account the temperatures and heat fluxes on these regions to obtain the deformations and tractions that appear in the bodies. This work studies how the 3D thermomechanical contact variables are affected by the thermal conductive and convection boundary conditions at the interstitial regions (i.e., possible heat interchange between the bodies due to a material or a fluid contained in the separation zones between them). For this purpose, considering the previous works of Giannopoulos and Anifantis, this work extends their 2D incremental contact methodology based on the Boundary Element Method to solve steady-state 3D thermoelastic contact problems where interstitial conductive and convective boundary conditions are considered. So the equilibrium configuration of the system is determined incrementally by solving the uncoupled thermal and thermoelastic problems for each incremental thermal and mechanical load. The proposed scheme is validated solving several benchmark problems presented in the literature and later applied to solve different 3D thermoelastic contact problems where the response is clearly influenced by the boundary conditions at interstitial regions.