Relaxation of the contact shearing stress in problems with sliding friction

A number of formulations of the contact problem of the theory of elasticity when there is friction present in the case of unidirectional relative sliding of the interacting bodies (movable coupling of the sliding guide type) are considered. Particular attention is given to the behaviour with time of the contact shearing stress q1 in a plane perpendicular to the sliding direction. It is established that this stress relaxes (decays) with time, which may serve as a basis for formulations of contact problems with unidirectional sliding of bodies, assuming that there is no stress q1 in the contact area 1., 2., 3., 4..