The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

A Perturbed Lagrangian Formulation for the Finite Element Solution of Contact Problems

Simo, Juan C.; Wriggers, Peter; Taylor, Robert L.

UCB/SESM-1984/14, Dept. of Civil Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, 1984-08, 36 pages (500/C23/84/14)

Making use of a perturbed Lagrangian formulation, a finite element procedure for contact problems is developed for the general case in which node-to-node contact no longer holds. The proposed procedure leads naturally to a discretization of the contact interface into contact segments. Within the context of a bilinear interpolation for the displacement field, a mixed finite element approximation is introduced by assuming discontinuous contact pressure, constant on the contact segment. Because of this piece-wise constant approximation, the gap function enters into the formulation in an "average" sense instead of through a point-wise definition.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/SEMM/SEMM-84-14.pdf (1 MB)