Contact is the primary mode of load transfer in structural assemblies, and the resulting
stress concentrations at the contact locations is the most critical point in the body.
Contact surfaces required desired properties that may produce less contact stresses
in some cases and surfaces that are wear resistant in others. Conventionally, these
properties were achieved by providing a softer coating for less contact stress and
a harder coating for wear resistance. However, surface coatings are less durable
because of abrupt changes in material properties at the interface between substrate
and coating. Smooth variation of properties can be achieved by using Functionally
Graded Material (FGM) coatings while retaining desired properties at the surface.
Therefore, it is essential to have a good understanding of contacts involving FGM
coatings. Finite Element Analysis (FEA) is one of the numerical approaches to solve
contact problems. However, FEA requires very fine meshing for convergence of
solutions and is computationally expensive. Series solution is another approach to
solve contact problems and have the advantage of being independent of the shape of the
indenter. However, the series solution can not be extended to understand the 3D effects
in contact analysis. The present work aims to combine coarse mesh finite element
analysis with the mechanics based series solution to develop a computationally efficient
numerical method to analyse three-dimensional contact of FGM coated substrate with
rigid indenter.