An investigation into the contact between soft elastic and poroelastic bodies rotating under load

Abstract

This paper explores the contact of soft elastic and poroelastic bodies rotating under load and inspects the differences in load carrying capacity between the two types of material. Both materials have been widely used to describe the behaviour of biological systems such as articular cartilage in mammalian joints, however, we demonstrate here that there are fundamental differences between the responses generated in which the poroelastic response has an additional fluid contribution to the solid structural response. In order to produce the same load carrying capacity it is shown that the poroelastic material must deform more than an incompressible soft elastic material with the same stiffness and that the solid load generated by a poroelastic material is the same as a soft elastic material with a zero Poisson’s ratio.

Keywords:

• Contact mechanics
• soft elasticity
• poroelasticity
• load carrying capacity

Acknowledgements

This research was facilitated by the School of Mechanical Engineering, University of Leeds and the Department of Aeronautics, Imperial College London. The authors wish to thank colleagues from their respective institutions for their insight and support.