International Journal of Engineering and Technology

The present study considers an elastic-plastic contact analysis of a deformable sphere with a rigid flat using finite element method. The effect of strain hardening on the contact behaviour of a non-adhesive frictionless elastic-plastic contact is analyzed using commercial finite element software ANSYS. To study the strain hardening effect we have taken different values of tangent modulus. The result of strain hardening effect clearly shows that a generalized solution can not be applicable for all kind of materials as the effect of strain hardening differently influenced the contact parameters. With the increase in the value of hardening parameter this effect also increases. For higher value of hardening parameter the effect of strain hardening is severe on contact parameters. With the increase in strain hardening the resistance to deformation of a material is increased and the material becomes capable of carrying higher amount of load in a smaller contact area.