Abstract: A numerical method in whole contact domain for elastic contact of three-di-mensional real rough surfaces is presented in this paper. The method uses regularly divided elements and partial flexibity-matrix storage to reduce memory space, and adopts contact domain contraction and successive under-relaxation method to solve the contact equation. With this numerical method, the contact pressure distribution, total load, real contact area, contact image and contact deformation of the elastic contact problems of three-dimensional real rough surfaces can be obtained. The calculated results agree with the experimental results obtained by the total reflection technique.

Key words: Contact, Real contact area, Rough surface