Subsurface treatment of a contact subjected to a hertz pressure

•Interest of subsurface treatment of a contact subjected to a hertz pressure.•Subsurface treatment allows to decrease shearing stress.•Subsurface holes location allows to ameliorate hertz contact.

The study proposes an approach allowing the favorable modification of the stresses field of a structure subjected to a Hertzian contact. It is based on the study of a classic Hertzian contact in the presence of subsurface circular defects. The idea is to limit the field of tangential stresses without large increasing of the global stress (Von Mises) of the system. The location of the defects is made according to the mechanical parameters of the contact (Fn, has, z). The results of the numerical calculations (FEM) are compared with photoelastic measurements and highlight an excellent correlation. The location of the defect on the symmetry axis (x=0) is the dominating parameter for the tangential stress decreasing.