Contact pressure between two rough surfaces of a cylindrical fit

Contact pressure, an important parameter for analysing and evaluating the contact behaviour, is always an interesting subject. The greater part of studies and results concentrates upon the contact, friction, wear, tear and lubrication for the cases of the rough contact. The tight fit is a current process of assembly for transmitting a force or a torque between a shaft and a hub with the help of friction effects. Contact surfaces play an important role in accounting for their capacities. The standards are based on the thick cylinder theory and does not take into account the surface textures and the asperity behaviour, although it is quite normal and useful to have rough surfaces, one is obliged to specify the very smooth contact surfaces. One obvious factor is that the smoother the surface is, the higher the manufacturing cost is. Moreover, having smooth surfaces does not result in a large friction coefficient. This paper, based on different precedent studies on roughness contact, bears, in mind on speciality of the tight fit problem, the distribution, the evolution of pressure, the plastic deformation of asperity and its influence on the pressure, in the objective to build a new method for computing the tight fitting pressure in a cylindrical tight fit [Influence de l’état de surface sur les caractéristiques d’un assemblage fretté, Thèse de l’ENSAM, France, 1998].