Stress concentration due to an array or hemispherical cavities at the surface of an elastic half-space

The paper investigates the perturbation in an otherwise uniform stress field in an elastic half-space due to a doubly-periodic array of small hemispherical holes at the free surface. The solution is obtained using three potential functions of double Fourier series form in Galerkin's strain potential solution, the coefficients of which are determined using the collocation method. The unperturbed field is taken to be one of uniform plane stress parallel to the free surface. Two special cases are studied—uniform tension and uniform shear stress. Numerical results for these cases can be generalized by superposition to give solutions for a general state of biaxial plane stress. It is found that, for both tension and shear, the maximum stress concentration occurs at the bottom of the holes. The stress concentration factor increases with the ratio of hole spacing to radius, approaching the known solution for a single hemispherical hole at large ratios.