Hertzian Contact of Anisotropic Piezoelectric Bodies

The Fourier transform method is applied to the Hertzian contact problem for anisotropic piezoelectric bodies. Using the principle of linear superposition, the resulting transformed (algebraic) equations, whose right-hand sides contain both pressure and electric displacement terms, can be solved by superposing the solutions of two sets of algebraic equations, one containing pressure and another containing electric displacement. By presupposing the forms of the pressure and electric displacement distribution over the contact area, the problem is solved successfully; then the generalized displacements, stresses and strains are expressed by contour integrals. Details are presented in the case of special orthotropic piezoelectricity whose material constants satisfy six relations, which can be easily degenerated to the case of transverse isotropic piezoelectricity. It can be shown that the result gained in this paper is of a universal and compact form for a general material.Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.10372003).