(to be submitted for journal publication )
S. Maiti1, G.H. Paulino2 and P.H. Geubelle1
1Department of Aeronautical and Astronautical
Engineering
2Department of Civil and Environmental Engineerin
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Newmark
Laboratory
205 North Mathews Avenue, IL
61801, U.S.A.
Abstract
This paper Focus on static contact problem sin two dimensions, in the absensce of friction, using the boundary element method. The goal is to design a simple and efficient algorithm for the search and enforcement of contact, which can be easily implemented with the boundary element technique. Pbulished methods in the literature generally require a priori body controlling displacements, and the body controlling tractions. This preprocessing is not easy to employ in the presence of more than two bodies coming in contact. In this paper, a symmetric algorithm is developed where the bodies in contact have equal role in enforcing equillibrium and compatibility. This approach has special advantage in multibody contact problems (e.g. three-body contact) as there is no need of preprocessing nor of decomposing the bodies in separate pairs. A few examples are given including advancing and receding contacting surfaces, and both conforming and non-conforming meshes.
Key words: static contact, frictionless contact, boundary element method (BEM), non-conforming meshing, constrained optimization