The task is undertaken of determining the bearing pressures, and the stresses and deformations created by them, in some cases that differ from those considered by Hertz in his classical study of contact. Thus two solids are examined which, before loading, are in contact along a row of evenly spaced lines in a horizontal plane, as indicated in Fig. 1(a). Between these lines the surfaces have a separation defined by a nearly flat cosine wave. A uniform pressure on top of the upper solid creates contact over an area consisting of a row of strips, reduces the separation of the solids between the strips, as suggested in Fig. 1(b), and creates contact pressures distributed as indicated in Fig. 1(c), with vertical rises in the diagram of pressure at the edges of the strips. At a greater load the width of the strip becomes equal to the wave length, and the contact is complete. At still greater loads the stresses increase as if the two solids were one. The procedure by which this problem is solved is demonstrated first by showing its easy application to some well-known cases, especially Hertz’s problem of circular cylinders in contact. Further applications are to a noncircular cylinder resting on a solid with a flat top, with an initial separation of the surfaces varying as the fourth power of the distance from the initial line of contact; to partial contact of two surfaces which are initially plane, except that one of them has a ridge or several parallel ridges; and to some related problems in which two parts of the same body are partially separated by the forming of one or more cracks.
