On the Tangential Displacement of a Surface Point Due to a Cuboid of Uniform Plastic Strain in a Half-Space

The elastic solution of a tangentially loaded contact is known as the Cerruti’s solution. Since the contact surfaces could be easily discretized in small rectangles of uniform shear stress the elastic problem is usually numerically solved by summation of well known integral solution. For soft metallic materials, metals at high temperature, rough surfaces or dry contacts with high friction coefficient, the yield stress within the material could be easily exceeded. This paper presents the effect of a cuboid of uniform plastic strain in a half-space on the tangential displacement of a surface point. It is found that the influence coefficients are of the same order of magnitude as the ones describing the normal displacement. This result is of great importance for stick-slip contact problem when coupling the normal and tangential behavior in the elastic-plastic regime, and also for metals and alloys with low or moderate yield stress.