Novel model for partial-slip contact involving a material with inhomogeneity

Contacts involving partial slip are commonly found at the interfaces formed by mechanical components. However, most theoretical investigations of partial slip are limited to homogeneous materials. This work proposes a novel and fast method for partial-slip contact involving a material with an inhomogeneity based on the equivalent inclusion method, where the inhomogeneity is replaced by an inclusion with properly chosen eigenstrains. The stress and displacement fields due to eigenstrains are formulated based on the half-space inclusion solutions recently derived by the authors and solved with a three-dimensional fast Fourier transform algorithm. The effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed method is demonstrated by comparing its solutions with those from the finite element method. The partial slip contact between an elastic ball and an elastic half space containing a cuboidal inhomogeneity is further investigated. A number of in-depth parametric studies are performed for the cuboidal inhomogeneity with different sizes and at different locations. The results reveal that the contact behavior of the inhomogeneous material is more strongly influenced by the inhomogeneity when it is closer to the contact center and when its size is larger.