ABSTRACT
A vast number of publications on the mechanics of the contact interaction between deformable solids has accumulated, the beginning of which goes back as far as 1882 when H. Hertz published his classic work ‘On the contact of elastic bodies’. The technical ease of contact tests, the possibility of carrying out non-destructive tests under extreme conditions and the possibility of testing small samples while obtaining many parameters of the equation of state are but a few of the advantages of contact testing. The chapter shows how K. Tanaka’s model can be modified to account for reversible phase transformations induced only by hydrostatic pressure under contact loading. The nonlinearity is stipulated by the existence of a free boundary and by the plastic flow and phase transformations in the coating. Particular areas of concern include shape, the size of the transformation zone and the properties of the phases that appear in the transformation zone.
