Effect of friction in wedging of elastic solids

In this paper the contact problem for an elastic wedge of arbitrary angle is considered. It is assumed that the external load is applied to the medium through a rigid wedge and the coefficient of friction between the loading wedge and the elastic solid is constant. The problem is reduced to a singular integral equation of the second kind with the contact pressure as the unknown function. An effective numerical solution of the integral equation is described and the results of three examples are presented. The comparison of these results with those obtained from the frictionless wedge problem indicates that generally friction has the tendency of reducing the peak values of the stress intensity factors calculated at the wedge apex and at the end points of the contact area.This work was supported by NASA-Laugley under the Grant NGR 39-007-011 and by NSF under the Grant GK-42771X.