The JKR-type adhesive contact problems for transversely isotropic elastic solids

•We study adhesive contact in the framework of the JKR theory.•We extend the theory to transversely isotropic materials.•The theory is extended to general shapes of contacting axisymmetric solids.•We show the formulae have the same mathematical form as for isotropic materials.•The relations among force, displacements and contact radius are derived explicitly.

The JKR (Johnson, Kendall, and Roberts) and Boussinesq–Kendall models describe adhesive frictionless contact between two isotropic elastic spheres or between a flat end punch and an elastic isotropic half-space. Here adhesive contact is studied for transversely isotropic materials in the framework of the JKR theory. The theory is extended to much more general shapes of contacting axisymmetric solids, namely the distance between the solids is described by a monomial (power-law) function of an arbitrary degree d⩾1d⩾1. The classic JKR and Boussinesq–Kendall models can be considered as two particular cases of these problems, when the degree of the punch d is equal to two or it goes to infinity, respectively. It is shown that the formulae for extended JKR contact model for transversely isotropic materials have the same mathematical form as the corresponding formulae for isotropic materials; however the effective elastic contact moduli have different expression for different materials. The dimensionless relations between the actual force, displacements and contact radius are given in explicit form. Connections of the problems to nanoindentation of transversely isotropic materials are discussed.