Elastic-plastic rolling-sliding contact on a quarter space

The analysis of the steady state residual stresses and cyclic plastic strains of a quarter space under repeated contact loading may be a useful method to approximate wheel-rail contact. For this reason, a three-dimensional elastic-plastic rolling-sliding contact problem on a quarter space is investigated. In this paper, a direct analysis method for problems in repeated elastic-plastic rolling-sliding contact is employed. The method is shown to be a highly efficient technique for the determination of the steady state solution, such as residual stress, residual strain, and the cyclic strain range, under proportional or non-proportional cyclic loading and may be used to predict fatigue life. In addition to the direct analysis method, a numerical quarter space solution is applied to calculate the elastic stress field used in the modified projection process of the direct analysis method.