Experimental Investigation of Flat Surfaces in Contact

This paper presents a method of measuring deformations in the contact between flat surfaces and a way of estimating the shares of elastic and plastic deformations in the total contact deformations. Experiments showed that the share of plastic deformations in the total contact deformations varied depending on the strength parameters of the specimens and the roughness parameters of the contacting surfaces, amounting to a few per cent and to 37% for respectively steel specimens and specimens made of aluminium alloy AW5754. A strategy for estimating all the deformation components for the tested specimen types and the kinds of machining is presented.