Semi-analytical contact modeling of finite-width functionally graded coatings

  • Xiang XU ,
  • Peilin FU ,
  • Xiaowei WANG ,
  • Jianming GONG ,
  • Jianping ZHAO ,
  • Qianhua KAN
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  • 1.Institute of Reliability Centered Manufacturing, School of Mechanical and Power Engineering, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing 211816, China
    2.School of Mechanics and Engineering Science, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
    3.Sichuan Province Key Laboratory of Advanced Structural Materials Mechanical Behavior and Service Safety, School of Mechanics and Aerospace Engineering, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu 611756, China
Peilin FU, E-mail: plfu@pku.edu.cn

Received date: 2026-02-27

  Revised date: 2026-06-01

  Online published: 2026-07-31

Supported by

Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 12502087, U21A20167, 12192210, 12192214, and 11872321), the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Nos. BX20250280 and GZC20240702), the National Key Research and Development Project of China (No. 2025ZD0611000), the Sichuan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 2025ZNSFSC0008), and the Independent Project of State Key Laboratory of Rail Transit Vehicle System (No. 2023TPL-T03)

Copyright

© Shanghai University 2026

Abstract

Coatings widely applied on the surfaces of tribological components often exhibit depth-dependent material properties, and their optimal design requires the thorough understanding of contact mechanics for functionally graded (FG) coatings. However, most existing studies have adopted the assumption of an infinite-width coating, which differs significantly from the selective coating strategies commonly employed in engineering applications. Therefore, this paper develops a semi-analytical contact model for finite-width FG coatings. The coating modulus is allowed to vary arbitrarily along the depth direction, and no strict limitations are imposed on the coating width. The void zones flanking the coating are treated as zero-modulus coating segments, thereby extending the original coating into a fictitious infinitely wide layer. The modulus difference between coating and substrate enables the inclusion description of the coating, and the resulting disturbances are explicitly quantified through eigenstrains and related analytical solutions. In combination with the coupled relationship between the normal traction and the eigenstrain, the conjugate gradient (CG) method is used to robustly solve for the required normal traction. Parametric investigations based on the developed model demonstrate that increasing the coating modulus elevates structural stiffness and enhances contact stresses; the decreased distance from one coating edge to the initial contact point increases the normal traction and causes its profile to shift away from that edge, but the two edge effects vanish when the distance exceeds a certain threshold; deepening the FG coating intensifies the edge effects and amplifies the influence of the elastic dissimilarity between the coating and the substrate.

Cite this article

Xiang XU , Peilin FU , Xiaowei WANG , Jianming GONG , Jianping ZHAO , Qianhua KAN . Semi-analytical contact modeling of finite-width functionally graded coatings[J]. Applied Mathematics and Mechanics, 2026 , 47(8) : 1835 -1854 . DOI: 10.1007/s10483-026-3422-8

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