Viscoelastic normal indentation of nominally flat randomly rough contacts

Abstract Viscoelastic materials are receiving increasing attention in soft robots and pressure sensitive adhesives design, but also in passive damping techniques in automotive and aerospace industry. Here, by using the correspondence principle originally developed by Lee and Radok and further extended by Ting and Greenwood, we transform the elastic solutions of Persson for contact of nominally flat but randomly rough surfaces to viscoelastic indentation. As an example, the cases of step loading and of the response to a single cycle of harmonic loading are studied. For the latter, the effect of the loading frequency, of the ratio between the rubbery and the glassy moduli of the material, and of the mean normal load on the dissipated energy per cycle is studied in detail for a standard viscoelastic material. The results shown are significant for the engineering applications involving cyclic indentation of soft materials, such as in tire-road contact, seals, pick-and-place manipulators and grippers