Contact of rough surfaces: Conductance—stiffness connection for contacting transversely isotropic half-spaces

Explicit connection between conductance (electric or thermal) and incremental elastic stiffness of a rough contact of transversely-isotropic half-spaces is given. It applies to one or multiple contact areas of arbitrary geometries and extends the relation given earlier by Barber (2003) for the isotropic half-spaces. The dependence of the cross-property coefficient on the extent of the conductive anisotropy is relatively weak whereas the elastic anisotropy produces substantially stronger effect.