The Rolling Contact of Two Elastic-Layer-Covered Cylinders Driving a Loaded Sheet in the Nip

A circular stress function is used for the steady rolling contact of two cylinders. Each cylinder has an elastic layer bonded to a hard core, and an elastic thin sheet is compressed in the contact arc and being driven by the system. An asymmetric stress distribution is caused by a pushing or pulling force acting at the tail end of the sheet. The effect of the normal load and the tail force on the speed ratios of the two cylinders and the sheet, and also the local slippage in the contact arc are studied by enforcing the exact conditions at the contact zone. The resulting equations are solved by the collocation method and an iterative procedure which stepwisely unlocked the nonslip contacting points whenever the calculated interface shear exceeds the local Coulomb friction.