Elastic-Plastic Microcontact Modeling Using Dislocations

A new method for simulation of microscopic elastic-plastic contacts is developed. Microcontact plastic deformation is described in terms of nucleation and motion of discrete crystal dislocations. The new method allows elastic-plastic microcontacts to be investigated on the scales too small to apply conventional continuum mechanics methods, but still too large for atomistic simulations. The model is scale-sensitive and allows scale effects of microcontact elastic-plastic behavior to be studied theoretically. Results of several two-dimensional elastic-plastic microcontact simulations performed using the developed method are presented in this paper.