Thermal and slip mechanism effects in rapid indentation by a flat punch (Q1814926)

This paper treats the rapid indentation of a fully-coupled thermoelastic body by a flat, smooth rigid punch using a two-dimensional dynamic analysis. The process is described by a short-time model, and a zone of slip mechanism is assumed to form under the punch edge and to relax the stresses there. The main result: By superposition and transform methods the mathematical problem can be reduced to a Wiener-Hopf equation which, despite the dependence of poles and branch points on the time transform parameter, can be solved exactly. The stress relaxation property removes the singularity in punch edge stresses, thereby giving a relation for the temperature change in the contact region. On the other hand, because a thermoelastic characteristic length of \(O(10^{-4})\mu\)m is the scalar factor, this transform can be inverted for the so-called long times without invalidating the short-time nature of the model. The inversion shows that, despite the absence of actual plasticity and contact friction, nominal but not negligible increases in temperature can occur in the contact region.