On the contact of a rigid sphere and a thin plate

We consider the problem of the contact between a rigid sphere and a thin initially flat plate. After reviewing some plate theory, we establish that a deformation where a finite piece of the plate takes the shape of the sphere is physically unrealisable, and that the contact region must be a ring. However, for both small deflections using classical linear elastic theory and large deflections using von Kármán theory, looking at some typical parameter values we find that the radius of the ring is so small that for practical purposes it should be considered as a point load. c © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.