Contact problems for several transversely isotropic elastic layers on a smooth elastic half-space

The idea of generalized images, first used by the author for the case of crack problems, is applied here to solve a contact problem for n transversely isotropic elastic layers, with smooth interfaces, resting on a smooth elastic half-space, made of a different transversely isotropic material. A rigid punch of arbitrary shape is pressed against the top layer's free surface. The governing integral equation is derived for the case of two layers; it is mathematically equivalent to that of an electrostatic problem of an infinite row of coaxial charged disks in the shape of the domain of contact. This result is then generalized for an arbitrary number of layers. As a comparison, the method of integral transforms is also used to solve the problem. The main difference of our integral transform approach with the existing ones is in separating of our half-space solution from the integral transform terms. It is shown that both methods lead to the same results, thus giving a new interpretation to the integral transform as a sum of an infinite series of generalized images.