Contact fatigue is a phenomenon which occurs between bodies in rolling (or rolling and sliding) contact exposed to cyclic mechanical stresses. It is a typical mode of destruction of machine parts under strong and repeated Hertz contact pressure: bearings, gears, wheel-track contact, but also in cams and valves. All the above-mentioned machine parts also occur in machines used in the textile and leather industries. The machines used in the textile and leather industry work with synchronisation in the micron range. Addressing this topic in the master's programme is useful for understanding the phenomenon and for recognizing the first signs of damage and their effects. The understanding of the phenomenon and of the contact mathematical model focused on machine parts (elastic or elasto-plastic contact) can also be extrapolated to the contact between heel and support surface in the impact phase of gait or in the analysis of the effects of pressure spikes in footprint analysis. Basically, the phenomenon is the same, but the materials of the contact surfaces differ. The mathematical and mechanical knowledge of students in the textile and leather engineering fields is much lower than in other engineering fields and therefore, we propose a more intuitive approach to the phenomena and an understanding of the mechanisms only through cause-effect analysis.

concentrated contact; FEM; SAM; Hertz; contact fatigue.