A neural network model for prediction of rough surface real area of
contact
M. Rapetto, A. Almqvist, R. Larsson, P. Lugt
Abstract—A feedforward neural network has been applied to
determine the relationship between some standard roughness
parameters and the real area of contact. The trained model
was able to capture the dependence of the real area of contact
on the roughness parameters. The ability of the neural
network to generalize on unseen data was tested. The neural
network was able to prove the correlation between the
roughness parameters and the real area of contact.
I. INTRODUCTION
O nly a small part of the surfaces nominally in contact
are actually in contact, because of the roughness. The real
area of contact Ar is formed by the sum of the contact spots
between the two surfaces. Friction and wear occur in these
actual contacts: for some applications the wear must be
minimized, in other applications low friction is required and
consequently the real area of contact has to be minimized.
This area minimization produces high pressure peaks and
thus an increased risk of failure for the component.
A general trend in industry is to reduce the viscosity of
the lubricants in order to reduce the frictional losses in
machine elements such as bearings and gears. The result is a
reduction in film thickness between gear teeth or roller-ring
contacts. Gears are generally quite rough and operate under
relatively high sliding conditions. Surface asperity contact is
inevitable and so-called EP/AW additives are used to reduce
the damage that is caused by this asperity contact and
therefore increase gear-life. Rolling element bearing surfaces
are usually much smoother and operate under very low slip
rates. Therefore the lubrication conditions are much milder
Manuscript received January 31, 2007.
M. Rapetto is with Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Division of Machine Elements, Luleå SE -97187 Sweden
(corresponding author to provide phone: +46-920-491861; e-mail:
marco.rapetto@ ltu.se).
R. Larsson is with Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Division of Machine Elements, Luleå SE-97187 Sweden (e-mail:
roland.larsson@ltu.se).
A. Almqvist is with Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Division of Machine Elements, Luleå SE -97187 Sweden (e-mail:
andreas.almqvist@ltu.se).
P. Lugt is with SKF Engineering and Research Centre, P.O. 2350,
3430 DT Nieuwegein, Holland (e-mail: piet.Lugt@skf.com) and with
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Division of Machine
Elements, Luleå SE-97187 Sweden
here. Despite this, in many cases unexpected bearing failure
occurs, which may be ascribed to the chemical action that
these additives have on fatigue life. The mechanisms of
reaction of these additives are influenced by the pressure
and temperature in the contact spots which are influenced by
the real area of contact and the topography of the surfaces.
Thus it is very important to study how the surface
topography influences the contact conditions and the real
area of contact in order to produce surface topographies that
have a positive influence on contact conditions.
There are many approaches to model the contact between
surfaces in literature. Greenwood and Williamson [1] studied
the contact between two nominally flat surfaces. They
considered topographies made of hemis pherically shaped
asperities of uniform radius and they assumed that the
asperities had a Gaussian distribution in height about a mean
plane. This model was then improved by many researchers,
see for example [2] and [3]. The models considered made it
possible to calculate the real contact pressure and the real
area of contact. Tian and Bhushan [4] based their theoretical
model on a variational principle, see Kalker [5]. Recently
Persson [6] introduced a new theory on contact mechanics
for randomly rough surfaces based on fractals. Jamari and
Schipper [7] developed a theoretical model for the elastic-
plastic contact of ellipsoid bodies: they modeled the relations
of the contact parameters as a function of the contact
interference. Jackson and Streator [8] developed a non-
statistical multi-scale model of the normal contact between
rough surfaces and they made predictions for the contact
area as a function of contact load.
There are many deterministic numerical techniques that
may be applied to solve contact problems: multilevel
techniques [9], FFT [10], [11], moving greed method [12].
Almqvist et al [13] developed a model to be used for
numerical simulation of the contact of linear elastic perfectly
plastic rough surfaces. They based their model on variational
principles and they used FFT-technique to facilitate the
numerical solution process.
The present paper aims to investigate the influence of
standard roughness parameters on the real area of contact in
2D normal, dry, friction free, elastic rough contact using a
neural network. It means that by knowing the value of these
parameters it is possible to predict the value of A r for a given
load. New parameters are also introduced and their effect on
A r is studied.
 An artificial neural network (ANN) implements a function Ra 0.02 [µm] 0.47 [µm]
y(xi,wi); the output of the network, y, is a non-linear function Rq 0.03 [µm] 0.64 [µm]
of the input xi. This function is parameterized by the weights Rku 1.8 10.3
wi. The central idea of the neural network method is this: Rsk -2.5 2.0
given examples of a relationship between an input vector {x} Rdq 0.002 [rad] 0.11 [rad]
and a target t, the neural network is expected to learn a model Rk 0.05 [µm] 1.07 [µm]
of the relationship between {x} and t. A well trained network
Rpk 0.004 [µm] 1.55 [µm]
will give, for any given {x}, an output y that is close to the
.
target value t. ‘Training’ the network means to optimize the Table 2 ANN performance: mean squared error MSE, normalized
weights that produce a function that fits the provided mean squared error NMSE, mean absolute error MAE, minimum
training data well [14]. absolute error, maximum absolute error, correlation coefficient r

ANN performance Value

II. M ETHODOLOGY MSE 1.508
Five different running in surfaces have been measured NMSE 0.073
using a Wyko optical profilometer. From each 3D surface MAE 0.783
several 2D profiles have been taken. 1046 profiles have been Min abs err 0.003
analysed. The following standard roughness parameters Max abs err 5.252
have been calculated for each profile: centre line average Ra , r 0.966
root mean square Rq, kurtosis Rku, skewness Rsk, mean slope
Rdq, core roughness depth Rk, reduced peak height Rpk. The area of contact. The mean slope Rdq is the most important
real area of contact A r has been calculated for each profile parameter, followed by Rpk, and Ra . The skewness Rsk has a
using the model described in [13] . The roughness very small influence.
parameters are the inputs for the neural network, the target is
the Ar computed through the model. The data have been
randomized and divided in three groups: 60% of the data
form the training data set, 15% of the data form cross
validation set, used in order to avoid overfitting, and 20% of
the data have been used as testing data set to check the
neural network model. An ANN model has been built using a
feedforward neural network made of 2 hidden layers: the first
hidden layer consists of 8 hyperbolic tangent functions, the
second hidden layer consists of 4 hyperbolic tangent
functions. The third layer is a linear layer. In parallel another
14
neural network has been trained, considering standard
12
parameters and new roughness parameters.
10
Sensitivity

III. RESULTS 6

4
The set of input are included in Table 1. Fig. 1 shows the
test result of the first ANN model, while Table 2 summarizes 2

the performance of the network. For small values of Ar the 0

Ra Rq R ku R Sk Rdq Rk Rpk
predictions are better while for high values of Ar the
Fig. 2. Sensitivity analysis
predictions differ more from the best fit. However the ‘r’
coefficient is close to 0.97 meaning that there is a high linear
correlation between desired Ar and the predicted values. Fig.
2 illustrates the significance of each of the input variables,
as perceived by the neural network in influencing the real

Table 1 the input used to develop the model

Inpu minimum maximum

t
 25
data
linear

20

15

10
ANN output %

0
0 5 10 15 20
Desired Ar %

Fig. 1. ANN output versus desired Ar

unimportant. It is interesting to remark that even if a

IV. NEW PARAMETERS correlation analysis has shown a moderate correlation
Remembering that the highest asperity is the first that is in between Rcurv and Ar, the contribution of this parameter on
contact, then the other asperity, according to their height, the variation of Ar is negligible compared to that of the other
will be in contact, a restriction to the definition of mean slope variables included in the analysis.
has been introduced: the mean slope has been calculated
only considering the points whose height is equal or greater
than 0.4zmax where zmax is the highest asperity. For a digitized VI. CONCLUSIONS
profile with height z(i), i=1 to N, where N is the number of A neural network mo del has been used to predict the real
measurements, at a sampling interval ∆x, the modified mean area of contact between 2D rough surfaces in contact and to
slope Rdq04 is given by: investigate the effect of standard and new roughness
1  s( i + 1) − s( i )  parameters on Ar. The ANN model has been successfully
Rdq04 = ∑
N −1 

∆x


s ≥ 0.4 z max (1) trained and has predicted unseen data satisfactorily. The
present study has shown that ANN models offer a powerful
A weighted curvature parameter has been introduced. It is method of identifying trends in datasets and analyzing
given by: the contributions of the input parameters. This paper

Rcurv =
1 ∑z peak (i ) R peak (i )
(2)
should
z peak N
Table 3 Input parameters
where zpeak is the summit height of the peak (3 point peak),
Rpeak is the curvature of the peak, N the number of peaks, Inpu minimum maximum
z peak is the average peak height. The higher a peak is, the t
more important it is, hence if a profile is characterized by a Ra 0.02 [µm] 0.47 [µm]
very high peak, this peak dominates. The linear correlation Rpk 0.004 [µm] 1.55 [µm]
coefficient between Rcurv and A r is equal to -0.69 and Rdq04 0.006 [rad] 0.08 [rad]
indicates a moderate correlation between the two variables as Rcurv 1.34 103 [m-1] 1.81 105 [m-1]
it is shown in Fig 3.

V. NEW PARAMETERS ANALYSIS

The neural network model has been used to investigate the
influence of the new parameters. The set of inputs are
included in Table 3. Fig. 4 shows the test result, Table 4 the
ANN performance and Fig. 5 visualizes the significance of
the input parameters calculated through sensitivity analysis .
It is clear from the result of the sensitivity analysis that the
modified mean slope Rdq04 affects the real area of contact,
while the weighted curvature parameter Rcurv seems to be
 4

3.5

2.5

log(Ar)
1.5

0.5

0
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
log(Rcurv)

Fig. 3. log (Rcurv ) versus log(Ar)

Table 4 New parameters analysis ANN performance

25
data
linear

20

15

10
ANN output %

0
0 5 10 15 20 25
Desired Ar %

Fig. 4. New parameters analysis,ANN output versus desired Ar

and artificial intelligence. Future work will concentrate on

optimizing the ANN model. The procedure used to obtain the
30
best model proceeds as follows. The most important input
25
parameters are selected using the ANN model presented in
20 this paper, then using the final set of input an optimized
Sensitivity

15
ANN model is determined by changing the number of hidden
units, the number of neurons in each hidden layer, the
10
function used in each neuron, the type of algorithm used by
5 the neural network, until the minimum mean squared error is
0 found. The model may also be improved by including a
Ra Rpk Rdq04 Rcurv capacity to indicate uncertainty. This indication of modeling
Fig. 5. New parameters analysis, sensitivity analysis uncertainty can provide information about where it would be
useful to concentrate the future study.
ANN performance Value
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