“…These problems become especially urgent in connection with the intense introduction of units with contact interaction of thin-walled structural elements into the contemporary engineering practice. In this case, contact problems differ from the classical contact problems of the theory of elasticity [6,8,41,43,54,62,65] and their solution requires the application of different mathematical methods [11,20,64,73,77,80,81]. By using different versions of the theory of plates and shells, one can significantly simplify the mathematical model of the problems of contact interaction and wear and, at the same time, take into account the anisotropy of physicomechanical and thermal characteristics of contacting bodies (typical of new modern antifriction composite materials) and the presence of thin protective coatings [9,47,61,70,71,75].…”