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Until recently the analysis of contacts in tribological systems usually required the solution of complicated boundary value problems of three-dimensional elasticity and was thus mathematically and numerically costly. With the development of the so-called Method of Dimensionality Reduction (MDR) large groups of contact problems have been, by sets of specific rules, exactly led back to the elementary systems whose study requires only simple algebraic operations and elementary calculus. The mapping rules for axisymmetric contact problems of elastic bodies have been presented and illustrated in the previously published parts of The User's Manual, I and II, in Facta Universitatis series Mechanical Engineering [5, 9]. The present paper is dedicated to axisymmetric contacts of viscoelastic materials. All the mapping rules of the method are given and illustrated by examples.

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We analyse the oblique impact of linear-viscoelastic spheres by numerical models based on the Method of Dimensionality Reduction and the Boundary Element Method. Thereby we assume quasi-stationarity, the validity of the half-space hypothesis, short impact times and Amontons-Coulomb friction with a constant coefficient for both static and kinetic friction. As under these assumptions both methods are equivalent, their results differ only within the margin of a numerical error. The solution of the impact problem written in proper dimensionless variables will only depend on the two parameters necessary to describe the elastic problem and a sufficient set of variables to describe the influence of viscoelastic material behaviour; in the case of a standard solid this corresponds to two additional variables. The full solution of the impact problem is finally determined by comprehensive parameter studies and partly approximated by simple analytic expressions.

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