ELASTIC GREENS-FUNCTION FOR AN INFINITE HALF-SPACE OF A HEXAGONAL CONTINUUM WITH ITS BASAL PLANE AS SURFACE

The elastic Green's function of a continuum is useful for investigating distortions of a substrate due to localised surface forces. A closed analytic solution for the Green's function is found for the specific case of an infinite half-space of a hexagonal continuum with its basal plane as surface. The problem differs from that of an infinite whole space as boundary conditions require that there are no normal components of stress at the surface. It has been verified that the result satisfies these boundary conditions and that, in the appropriate limit, it coincides with Mindlin's solution for an isotropic continuum. An expression for the stresses in an infinite half-space of a hexagonal continuum with its basal plane as surface is appended. This expression has also been shown to agree with its isotropic counterpart in the appropriate limit. © 1979.