Plane Elastic Boundary Value Problem Posed by Displacement and Force Orientations on a Closed Contour

A boundary value problem (BVP) of the plane elasticity posed in terms of the orientations of forces and displacements is considered. The main aim of the present paper is to investigate the solvability of BVPs of this kind. Firstly, analysis of two cases is performed: the case of a circle with special orientations of force and displacement vectors on the circumference and the case of an arbitrary contour with coaxial orientations of these vectors. The solutions obtained indicate that the problem can have a certain number of solutions or be unsolvable. Then the BVP is reduced to a boundary integral equation and its solvability is investigated for the general case of a smooth simple-connected closed contour. As a result, the number of linearly independent solutions is determined. This number only depends upon the angle between the force and displacement vectors. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.