A numerical study of traveling waves in a viscoelastic cylinder cover under rolling contact

Polymer-covered cylinders are widely used in high-speed industrial rolling contact machines. In this paper, traveling waves which appear at high speeds in the viscoelastic polymer cover of a cylinder due to rolling contact are studied using a 2D finite element (FE) model for a two-cylinder system. Through eigenmode analysis of the polymer cover, it is found that an infinite number of natural mode families exist for the cylinder cover due to its finite thickness. A critical speed below which the traveling waves do not appear can be calculated on the basis of a resonance condition using the modal information. In dynamic analyses, traveling waves in the cover are identified as modified quasi-elastic Rayleigh waves composed of the eigenmodes of the polymer cover. The symbiosis of the eigenmode and wave propagation aspects allows the formation of a coherent overall picture of the traveling wave phenomenon. The critical speed according to the resonance condition is also the minimum phase velocity of the waves propagating in the cover. At the critical speed and above, there is a spectrum of resonant speeds due to wave dispersion. It is found that the traveling wave phenomenon is best described as a Rayleigh wave resonance in which contact-induced modified quasi-elastic Rayleigh waves arising at critical and supercritical speeds superpose to form a strong traveling shock wave.