Frictionless elliptical contact of thin viscoelastic layers bonded to rigid substrates

A three-dimensional unilateral contact problem for thin viscoelastic layers bonded to rigid substrates shaped like elliptic paraboloids is considered. Two cases are studied: (a) Poisson's ratios of the layer materials are not very close to 0.5 and (b) the layer materials are incompressible with Poisson's ratio of 0.5. Poisson's ratios are assumed to be time independent. In the present paper we derive the general solutions to the problems of elliptical contact between thin compressible or incompressible layers of arbitrary viscoelastic materials. The approach is based on the analytical method developed by the authors for the elliptical contact of thin biphasic cartilage layers. The obtained analytical solution is valid for monotonically increasing loading conditions.