CONTACT PROBLEMS FOR A WEDGE WITH ROUNDED APEX

Elastic contact between a shallow elastic wedge, whose apex is blunted by a finite radius, and an elastically similar half-plane is studied. A closed-form contact law is found, and the interior stress field is then deduced using a Muskhelishvili's solution in series form, for fri ctionless and sliding conditions, This geometry removes one of the pri ncipal objections to classical solutions to the wedge indentation prob lem-the unrealistic infinite stress concentration implied by an atomic ally sharp apex-and in the latter part of the paper the strength of th e contact is evaluated explicitly. Further, cases of partial slip asso ciated with the application, of tangential load less than needed to ca use sliding are considered. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All-rights reserved.