Contact stiffness is an important parameter for describing the contact behavior of rough surfaces. In this study, to more accurately describe the contact stiffness between grinding surfaces of steel materials, a novel microcontact stiffness model is proposed. In this model, the novel cosine curve-shaped asperity and the conventional Gauss distribution are used to develop a simulated rough surface. Based on this simulated rough surface, the analytical expression of the microcontact stiffness model is obtained using contact mechanics theory and statistical theory. Finally, an experimental study of the contact stiffness of rough surfaces was conducted on different steel materials of various levels of roughness. The comparison results reveal that the prediction results of the present model show the same trend as that of the experimental results; the contact stiffness increases with increasing contact pressure. Under the same contact pressure, the present model is closer to the experimental results than the already existing elastic-plastic contact (CEB) and finite-element microcontact stiffness (KE) models, whose hypothesis of a single asperity is hemispherical. In addition, under the same contact pressure, the contact stiffness of the same steel material decreases with increasing roughness, whereas the contact stiffness values of different steel materials under the same roughness show only small differences. The correctness and accuracy of the present model can be demonstrated by analyzing the measured asperity geometry of steel materials and experimental results.
Keywords: asperity; elastic–plastic deformation; grinding surface; microcontact stiffness model; simulated rough surface; steel material.