HERTZ Stresses

Not without seeing your report. Is there anything specific you don't understand? If so, then you could post that and see what others have to say about it.

My guess is that the area of contact is much smaller than the dimensions of the ball or plate so the resulting stress would be virtually identical.

I am herewith sharing the image. My question is that why the ball with 50 mm radius

material curve and, the flat plate with bulk of material being available adjacent to the

induced stresses to share the load, see the same stress values beneath the point of contact?

Because the surface area where the ball contacts the plate maintains a consistent size therefore both surfaces experience the same loading and share the same stress moments.

Whatever load and movement that is applied to the ball is immediately transferred directly to the plate surface.

Reducing stress could be achieved by, well, reducing the stress.

Lighten the load.

Spread it out so the burden is shared through larger and or more numerous supporting components.

If the path is regular consider contouring the plate to make the contact patch with the ball larger.

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It also would help if you provided more details and a better explanation.

Stress is not defined by the geometry if it refers to the strength of the material.

Same material same stress.

Stress = (Force/Area) so geometry does have a role in defining the area the force is applied over.

Ultimate and Yield stress are material properties but when calculating a given stress for a given load the geometry does need to be considered a factor.

Thank you Guru Nick for the answer with an appropriate illustration. From the formulations, the variables that contribute to the stress variation beneath the surface of contact appear to be Modulus of Elasticity and the poisson's ratio of the materails of concern. The geometries of the components along with the above two factors do only govern the peak compressive stress at the contact. I need to corroborate your last statement that when both the geometries are closely conforming may be in all the directions, the problem would simply degenerate to a compressive case rather than a contact stress case and in which these formulations would give spurious results.