Plane elasticity problem for a multi-wedge system with a thin wedge

The paper presents a method for studying a system of elastic wedges containing a thin wedge with the angle Θ₀, which may be arbitrary small. An analysis shows that the considered problem, involving 2-D vectors of tractions and displacements, cannot be solved by straight-forward extension of the method previously worked out by the authors for analogous scalar problems. The difficulty arises because of the disclosed feature of the dependences between the Mellin transformed displacements and tractions at the boundaries of a thin wedge: they are linearly dependent when their Taylor’s expansions in Θ₀ are represented by the first terms only. The difficulty is removed by using the consequences of the linear dependence and by an appropriate re-arrangement of variables. Then simple physical models, simulating the influence of a thin wedge on a multi-wedge system, become available. The models cover the cases of a very rigid and very compliant thin wedge and also intermediate cases. The ranges of the models applicability are studied analytically and illustrated by numerical results.