A Solution of Rigid Perfectly Plastic Cylindrical Indentation in Plane Strain and Comparison to Elastic-Plastic Finite Element Predictions With Hardening

The indentation of flat surfaces deforming in the plastic regime by various geometries has been well studied. However, there is relatively little work investigating cylinders indenting plastically deforming surfaces. This work presents a simple solution to a cylindrical rigid frictionless punch indenting a half-space considering only perfectly plastic deformation. This is achieved using an adjusted slip line theory. In addition, volume conservation, pileup and sink-in are neglected, but the model can be corrected to account for it. The results agree very well with elastic-plastic finite element predictions for an example using typical steel properties. The agreement does diminish for very large deformations but is still within 5% at a contact radius to cylinder radius ratio of 0.78. A method to account for strain hardening is also proposed by using an effective yield strength.