Nonlinear viscoelastic contact mechanics of long rectangular membranes

Abstract

A theoretical and numerical analysis of a long rectangular nonlinear viscoelastic membrane in adhesionless contact with a rigid substrate is presented. Computations are carried out for the case where material behaviour is given by Christensen's large deformation viscoelastic law. The effect of friction, loading and unloading rates, hold time and material viscosity on the deformation, energy dissipation and detachment load is investigated in detail. Wrinkling of the membrane is found for a subset of the parameter space. Our results show that energy dissipation and detachment load depend on the contact length achieved at peak pressure, in addition to the rate of loading and unloading. Our numerical results also reveal that there can be situations where maximum dissipation does not correspond to maximum detachment load.