In this paper, a concurrent multiscale simulation strategy coupling atomistic and continuum\nmodels was proposed to investigate the three-dimensional contact responses of aluminum single\ncrystal under both dry and lubricated conditions. The Hertz contact is performed by using both\nthe multiscale and full molecular dynamics (MD) simulations for validation. From the contact area,\nkinetic energy and stress continuity aspects, the multiscale model shows good accuracy. It can also\nsave at least five times the computational time compared with the full MD simulations for the same\ndomain size. Furthermore, the results of lubricated contact show that the lubricant molecules could\neffectively cover the contact surfaces; thereby separating the aluminum surfaces and bearing the\nsupport loads. Moreover, the surface topography could be protected by the thin film formed by the\nlubricant molecules. It has been found that the contact area decreases obviously with increasing the\nmagnitude of load under both dry and lubricated contacts. Besides, a decrease in contact area is\nalso seen when the number of lubricant molecules increases. The present study has confirmed that\nthe dimension of lubricated contacts could be greatly expanded during the simulation using the\nproposed multiscale method without sacrificing too much computational time and accuracy.
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