Contact stress analysis of an elastic half-plane containing multiple inclusions

This paper presents a two-dimensional contact stress analysis to investigate the effects of multiple inclusions on the contact pressure and subsurface stresses in an elastic half-plane. The boundary element method is used to analyze the contact problem where a set of integral equations is derived on the contact region and the matrix–inclusion interfaces. As the contact region is unknown a priori, an iterative procedure is implemented to determine the actual contact region and the contact pressure, and the tractions and displacements on the matrix–inclusion interfaces are obtained by solving the integral equations numerically. Numerical results show that the inclusions near contact surface could cause significant alterations in the contact pressure distribution. The stiff inclusions could toughen the surrounding material and reduce the internal stresses while the soft inclusions could increase the subsurface stresses.