Abstract
An elastic-plastic contact analysis is developed using a semi-analytical method. The elastic contact is solved within a Hertz theorem. The reciprocal theorem with initial strains is then introduced, to express the surface geometry as a function of contact stress and plastic strains. The irreversible nature of plasticity leads to an incremental formulation of the elastic-plastic contact problem, and an algorithm to solve this problem is set up. Closed form expression, which give residual stresses and surface displacements from plastic strains, are obtained by integration of the reciprocal theorem. The distribution of contact stress, residual stress and plastic strain are obtained by the changed surface geometry.