Interfacial separation between elastic solids with randomly rough surfaces: comparison between theory and numerical techniques

TL;DR

This paper compares theoretical predictions and numerical simulations of interfacial separation distributions between elastic solids with rough surfaces, demonstrating good agreement across multiple methods.

Contribution

It derives an analytical expression for the separation distribution using Persson's theory and validates it against various numerical techniques.

Findings

Good agreement between theory and numerical methods

Validation of Persson's theory for rough surface contact

Multiple numerical approaches yield consistent results

Abstract

We study the distribution of interfacial separations P(u) at the contact region between two elastic solids with randomly rough surfaces. An analytical expression is derived for P(u) using Persson's theory of contact mechanics, and is compared to numerical solutions obtained using (a) a half-space method based on the Boussinesq equation, (b) a Green's function molecular dynamics technique and (c) smart-block classical molecular dynamics. Overall, we find good agreement between all the different approaches.