In this paper, analytical surface shear stress distributions for elastically similar spheres under quasi-statically applied normal and tangential loads are compared to those obtained using Abaqus/Standard 6.9. The agreement is quite good, with both methods predicting seemingly paradoxical features such as shear stress free portions of the contact zone, as well as non-zero shear stress distributions that result in zero net tangential force. The finite element results for elastically dissimilar spheres, for which no analytically-based solution exists, show significant differences in the shear stress distributions from those seen for elastically similar materials, due to the additional radially symmetric shear stress caused by the elastic dissimilarity.
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