Stress Intensity Factors and Displacements in Elastic Contact and Crack Problems

Abstract

This article is designed to be a step in creation of the “contact and crack calculus.” This term is introduced to denote a mathematical description of the infinitesimal variations in the elastic fields due to infinitesimal variation of domain of contact or crack, respectively. Rice has created foundations of this apparatus for cracks. Here, similar results were obtained for normal contact problems. It is also shown that the relationships between the stress intensity factors and displacements in tangential crack problems can be made a working apparatus in both directions.