Dynamic frictional identation of an elastic half-plane by a rigid punch (Q1805082)

This work studies an elastodynamic indentation problem describing a rapid indentation of a deformable half-plane by a rigid body in the presence of Coulomb friction that reverses its direction along the contact length. Two different indentor geometries a treated: the uniformly moving wedge and the uniformly accelerating parabola. Due to the symmetry of both the indentor profile and loading, the friction changes directions only at one point, which coincides with the indentor apex. The authors give detailed exact analysis of the problem and observe that a stress singularity is built up at the point of sign-reversal of the friction. Moreover, this build-up occurs independently of any singularity due to the indentor profile itself. The study exploits the self-similarity of the problem by utilizing homogeneous function techniques previously used by the first author, along with the Riemann-Hilbert problem analysis. Finally, representative numerical results are given for the case of wedge indentation.