Transient behaviour and stability for the thermoelastic contact of two rods of dissimilar materials

Abstract

The paper investigates the transient behaviour and stability of a system consisting of two thermally conducting elastic rods in contact on their end faces, the other ends of the rods being built-in to two rigid walls which are maintained at different temperatures. It is assumed that there is a thermal resistance at the interface between the rods which is a known function of contact pressure or gap.A perturbation method is used to analyse the stability of the system and it is shown that there is a range of conditions under which the steady-state solution is unique but unstable. A finite difference method is then used to model the transient behaviour; it shows that under such conditions the system always tends to a steady oscillatory state in which the contact pressure varies periodically with time, possibly with periods of separation.