...) contact area and pressure distribution as the original complicated geometry. This observation is elucidated by using direct tensor notation to review a key assertion in Hertzian theory; namely, geometrically complicated contacting surfaces can be described to second-order accuracy as contacting ellipsoids...

...Ling He; Timothy C. Ovaert By applying the line integral of Barnett–Lothe tensors on oblique planes, the three-dimensional rough surface contact problem for a semi-infinite anisotropic elastic half-plane in contact with a rough rigid sphere is formulated. The conjugate gradient technique...

... , with AA T and BB T being purely imaginary. Hence, the three matrices S , H , and L defined by (19) S = i 2 AB T − I , H = 2 iAA T , L = − 2 iBB T are real and are called Barnett-Lothe tensors. As shown in Fig. 12...