Development of a tool for measuring the effect of surface roughness on steel structural response

Abstract

Driven by the industry's needs to address energy dissipation issues in mechanical connections, the set goals of the global scientific community, and previous research efforts to interpret how the condition of contact surfaces between two bodies in contact can be significant, a unique experimental setup has been devised to study the impact of the state of contact interaction between two bodies on the system's response. The purpose of the designed experimental setup is to correlate the roughness of contact surfaces with the deformation of a specially designed experimental sample. The roughness of contact surfaces represents the most dominant influencing factor in the contact interaction of two bodies. In terms of scale, the study, measurement, and analysis of surface roughness fall under the micro and nano scales. On the other hand, the change in deformation of the experimental sample as a result of the change in roughness falls under the macro scale. Based on all the aforementioned, the fundamental idea of the designed experimental setup can be seen. Considering that it is not possible to enter into contact interaction and explicitly analyse the influence of roughness on the response of a mechanical connection, the idea in overall research is to consider the macro behaviour of a specially prepared experimental sample depending on the level of roughness of the contact interaction surfaces at the micro level. The aim of this paper is to present details and challenges in the construction of an instrument necessary for such precise examinations, named “Precision Press with Arcs”.