Brief note: Some observations on oscillating tangential forces and wear ingeneral plane contacts

For general plane contact of elastically similar materials, including cases where there are multiple regions of contact, general properties of the par tial slip solution for conditions of constant normal force and monotonicall y increasing shearing force have been found recently by the first author. A n extension is given here to cover the unloading and cyclic loading cases. Further, it is shown that, if the tangential load varies between two fixed limits, the region of stick does not change, even if relative microslip cau ses wear, changing continuously the profile of the indenter. The contact ar ea will change, but wear will not enter the original region of adhesion. Th e theoretical limit to which wear will eventually, asymptotically proceed i s established, viz. almost complete contact over what is the initial stick zone, although it may, in practice, take a long time to reach this state. ( C) Elsevier, Paris.