Hertzian contact of orthotropic materials

Contact loading of orthotropic materials is of interest in impact problems and other applications with composite materials. Although solutions are available for special cases such as transversely isotropic materials, solutions for contact loading for more general orthotropic materials have appeared much less frequently in the literature. The present work shows that a general procedure for calculating stresses due to contact loading can be obtained by combining two previous solution techniques. The first is the procedure outlined by Willis, that uses numerical contour integration to determine the size and aspect ratio of the elliptical contact area, and the contact pressure distribution. Detailed stress fields are then obtained by using these parameters in the general solution for transverse pressure loading of laminated orthotropic materials due to Pagano and Srinivas and Rao. Comparisons with known results for special cases, along with comparisons of surface displacements and the indentor profile, indicate that good accuracy of the solution can be achieved. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.