Solution of adhesive contact problem on the basis of the known solution for non-adhesive one

Abstract

The well-known procedure of reducing an adhesive contact problem to the corresponding non-adhesive one is generalized in this short communication to contacts with an arbitrary contact shape and arbitrary material properties (e.g. non homogeneous or gradient media). The only additional assumption is that the sequence of contact configurations in an adhesive contact should be exactly the same as that of contact configurations in a non-adhesive one. This assumption restricts the applicability of the present method. Nonetheless, the method can be applied to many classes of contact problems exactly and also be used for approximate analyses.