by Ervin, John; Sevostianov, Igor

The paper provides statistical analysis on the effect of mutual positions of individual contacts on the overall resistance and incremental elastic stiffness of a cluster of contacts. We consider an example of a cluster with 76 contact spots of the same radii. The regular lattice of the contacts is compared with the perturbed ones (random clusters). The constriction resistance is determined as a sum of self resistance of the individual contacts and interactions between them. It is shown that the effect of perturbations is very small and, therefore, the mean distance between the centers of individual contacts can be used to estimate the overall cluster resistance. Using elasticity-conductivity cross-property connections, this result is transferred to the incremental elastic stiffness of the cluster. Thus, we established a correspondence between cluster of regular structure and cluster of randomly located contacts. The geometrical parameters governing elastic compliance and spreading resistance of the clusters are number of contact spots and the average distance between individual contacts.

DOI: 10.1007/s10704-009-9411-y
Online Date: 10/8/2009
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