LATERAL TRANSLATION OF A RIGID DISC IN A SEMI-INFINITE SOLID

An analysis is presented for the determination of the lateral response of a rigid circular disc embedded in an elastic half-space. In terms of the contact load distribution, a relaxed treatment of the mixed boundary-value problem is formulated as a system of coupled dual integral equations. By appropriate transformations, it is shown that the dual integral equations can be reduced to a pair of Fredholm integral equations, whose solutions are then computed. In addition to furnishing a unified view of existing solutions for zero and infinite embedments, the present treatment reveals a severe boundary-layer phenomenon which has been found to afflict this class of problems in general.