Ring plate on a transversely isotropic elastic halfspace

In this paper, a combined finite element method (FEM)-analytical approach has been used to study the elastic interaction of an axisymmetrically loaded ring plate with a transversely isotropic medium. Two cases of transversely isotropic medium have been considered viz., (i) homogeneous transversely isotropic halfspace and (ii) multilayered transversely isotropic halfspace. The stiffness matrix for the ring plate has been obtained using ring elements (FEM) in an explicit form and the stiffness matrix for the transversely isotropic halfspace models considered here have been obtained using a general analytical solution. The interface of ring plate and halfspace has been considered as smooth. The present approach automatically takes care of the semi-infinite nature of the transversely isotropic medium unlike the total finite element procedure where the halfspace is represented by a large size solid (discretised in to a large number of finite elements, especially in treating a multilayered halfspace) with certain imposed constraints. Results have been presented for the contact pressure distribution, displacement profile and bending moment variation in the ring plate. It is observed that the present approach is computationally efficient, more general and can be applied to different elastic contact problems.