Hysteresis Damping in Vibration Response of a Block in Elastic-Plastic Rough Surface Contact

The differences in load and unload paths in an elastic-plastic contact of a rough surface and a flat leads to hysteretic energy loss. The nonlinear normal vibration response of the block is examined when subject to an external compressive load. The vibration response corresponds to the application of a constant compressive external It is shown that vibration decay rate is constant as opposed to the exponential decay rate for the linear vibrating systems. Closed form equations relating contact damping and contact natural frequency to the surface parameters are given.