ABSTRACT
The FEA models have two basic geometrical parameters. For configuration 1 this includes the diameter of the rigid slider D, and the depth of deformation d. For configuration 2, D is now the diameter of the rubber hemisphere, the depth of deformation d is defined as:
d D h= − 2
(2)
where h defines the height of the deformed hemisphere. The experiments and FEA models use a rubber block thickness of 5.5 mm, with a maximum indentation of around 1.5 mm at the highest normal load (20 N). Earlier work by Busfield and Thomas (1999) showed how to account for a ratio of rubber thickness to the diameter of circular contact less than 10:1, to account for complications arising due to the supporting (rigid) boundary conditions underneath the rubber block. A similar approach was seen to work well here.
