Note on the shape of a slip zone in planar frictional sliding

Effect of Poisson’s ratio on the evolution of planar sliding in the vicinity of a local drop in frictional resistance under remotely applied uniform shear load is discussed. The local reduction of frictional resistance may be caused by various factors (for example, variability of the friction coefficient). We demonstrate that under these mixed mode conditions the shape of the slip zone may be circular for the frictional resistance with non-axisymmetric distribution and non-circular for the frictional resistance with an axisymmetric distribution. Distortion of the shape is found to be related to Poisson’s ratio. Sliding propagation in the vicinity of the parabolic drop of the frictional resistance is studied in detail.