This book presents a comprehensive and unifying approach to articular
contact mechanics with an emphasis on frictionless contact interaction
of thin cartilage layers. The first part of the book (Chapters 1-4)
reviews the results of asymptotic analysis of the deformational behavior
of thin elastic and viscoelastic layers. A comprehensive review of the
literature is combined with the authors' original contributions. The
compressible and incompressible cases are treated separately with a
focus on exact solutions for asymptotic models of frictionless contact
for thin transversely isotropic layers bonded to rigid substrates shaped
like elliptic paraboloids. The second part (Chapters 5, 6, and 7) deals
with the non-axisymmetric contact of thin transversely isotropic
biphasic layers and presents the asymptotic modelling methodology for
tibio-femoral contact. The third part of the book consists of Chapter 8,
which covers contact problems for thin bonded inhomogeneous transversely
isotropic elastic layers and Chapter 9, which addresses various
perturbational aspects in contact problems and introduces the
sensitivity of articular contact mechanics.
This book is intended for advanced undergraduate and graduate students,
researchers in the area of biomechanics, and engineers interested and
involved in the analysis and design of thin-layer structures.