Stick-slip and wear phenomena at the contact interface between an elastic beam and a rigid substrate

In this paper, the static behavior of an elastic beam resting on a rigid substrate is investigated. The structure lies on a rigid substrate and exchanges with it tangential forces, in correspondence with a finite number of contact points. These actions entail extension of the beam in the longitudinal direction together with a negligible bending, owing to the small eccentricity between the beam’s axis line and the rigid substrate. The beam obeys a linear elastic law, while, at the interface, different nonlinear constitutive models are considered to account for stick-slip phenomena due to friction, as well as wear due to abrasion. It is assumed that the contact points are a-priori known, thus entailing that the structural system can be treated as naturally discrete. The static problem is accordingly shown to be governed by a system of nonlinear ordinary differential equations in time, which rules, in incremental form, the equilibrium at the contact points in the longitudinal direction. A numerical solution for the equilibrium equations is carried out, under different imposed time histories of the longitudinal displacement assigned at the boundary. Numerical results are presented to compare and discuss the in-time evolution of the contact interactions between the beam and the substrate.