Dynamic Load Effects on Coulomb Friction Contact Surfaces

Engineering systems of deformable bodies held together by dry friction, gravity and preload can be found in many engineering applications such as the railway ballast, structures connected by bolts and rivets. This paper studies the behavior of a two dimensional model of deformable block-incline system under dynamic loading of harmonic vibration by using finite element modeling and by experiments. It was found that the integrity of the system can break down, and that there are three regions of no relative movement between the block and the incline, the block moves down the incline and the block moves up the incline, depending on the value of excitation parameters of harmonic acceleration amplitude, frequency and the amount of preload between the two surfaces.