A comparative study of the methods for calculation of surface elastic deformation

A fundamental issue of lubrication analysis is the calculation of surface deformation, which includes two major steps: determination of influence coefficients and multiplication and summation. There are various interpolation schemes, such as the bilinear interpolation, the piecewise constant function or Green's function, available for determining the influence coefficients, while the summation operation may be performed by using one of the following methods: direct summation (DS), multilevel multi-integration (MLMI) or the discrete convolution and fast Fourier transform (DC-FFT) method. To limit the periodical errors, the proper way to implement the DC-FFT method is described in detail. The computation efficiency and numerical accuracy are compared by applying the different methods to typical contact problems. The results show that the three methods can achieve comparable numerical accuracy, but the DC-FFT method shows much higher computation efficiency than the others, especially when a great number of grid points are involved. It is concluded that the DC-FFT method has great potential in applications to the numerical analysis of, for example, surface deformations and temperature rises.