New, real fundamental solutions to the transient thermal contact problem in a piezoelectric strip under the coupling actions of a rigid punch and a convective heat supply

A thermo-electro-mechanical contact analysis has been performed for a finite piezoelectric strip, which is subjected to the joint actions of a rigid, flat punch and a transient convective heat supply. The Laplace transform and Fourier sine and cosine transforms were applied in solving the governing equations. A detailed analysis of the characteristic roots of the corresponding characteristic equation was made. Real fundamental solutions were derived, which can readily lead to real solutions to the thermo-electro-mechanical quantities. A Cauchy-type singular integral equation was obtained for the stated problem and then solved numerically. Closed form solutions of a special case were obtained. To obtain the accurate solution in the time domain, an effective numerical inversion algorithm of the Laplace transform was applied. Detailed analyses were performed to reveal the variation law of temperature, contact stress beneath the punch, stress intensity factor at the punch edge and strain with time. Parametric studies were performed to discover the effects of the layer thickness on the distribution of temperature, contact stress beneath the punch and stress intensity factor at the punch edge.