MECHANICS RESEARCH COMMUNICATIONS Vol. 6(5),309-316,1979. Printed in the USA. 0093-6413/79/050309-08502.00/0 Copyright (c) Pergamon Press Ltd GREEN'S FUNCTIONS FOR PLANAR THERMOELASTIC CONTACT PROBLEMS - EXTERIOR CONTACT J. Dundurs Department of Civil Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60201, U.S.A. Maria Comninou Department of Civil Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109, U.S.A. (Received 1 August 1979; accepted for print 31 August 1979) Introduction The purpose of this note is to record the Green's function that is suitable for formulating planar exterior thermoelastic contact problems. Exterior contact problems arise when the contacting bodies locally separate as heat is conducted through the inter- face. It is convenient to write the governing integral equations for such problems on the separation rather than the contact zones. The Green's function for the exterior contact consists of a ther- moelastic field (heat vortex) that allows one to construct an ar- bitrary temperature discontinuity across the interface, while maintaining continuity of heat flux, tractions and normal dis- placements, and a mechanical field (edge dislocation at a fric- tionless interface) which is required to introduce separation be- tween the solids. No derivations are given because it is readily confirmed that the results satisfy the field equations of thermo- elasticity and the appropriate boundary conditions at the inter- face. The simplifying assumption used is that the contact is frictionless. Heat Vortex The coordinate system is placed in relation to the contacting solids as shown in Fig. i. The two bodies are distinguished by the subscripts 1 and 2. The thermal conductivity is denoted by k, the coefficient of thermal expansion by ~, the shear modulus by ~ and Poisson's ratio by ~. 309