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Stress concentration in periodically rough hertzian contact: Hertz to soft-flat-punch transition

We report on the elastic contact between a spherical lens and a patterned substrate, composed of an hexagonal lattice of cylindrical pillars. The stress field and the size of the contact area are obtained by means of numerical methods (discrete Green's function superposition and iterative bisection-like methods). For small indentations, a transition from a Hertzian to a Boussinesq-Cerruti-like behavior is observed when the surface fraction of the substrate that is covered by pillars is increased. In particular, we present a master curve defined by two dimensionless parameters, which allows to predict the stress at the center of contact region in terms of the surface fraction occupied by pillars. The transition between the limiting contact regimes, Hertzian and Boussinesq-Cerruti-like, is well described by a rational function. Additionally, a simple model to describe the Boussines-Cerruti-like contact between the lens and a single elastic pillar, which takes into account the pillar geometry and the elastic properties of the two bodies, is presented.