F. Benbelgacem et al., APPROXIMATION OF THE UNILATERAL CONTACT PROBLEM BY THE MORTAR FINITE-ELEMENT METHOD, Comptes rendus de l'Academie des sciences. Serie 1, Mathematique, 324(1), 1997, pp. 123-127
The purpose of this Note is to extend the mortar finite element method
to handle the unilateral contact model between two deformable bodies.
The corresponding variational inequality is approximated using finite
elements with meshes which do not fit on the contact zone. The mortar
technique allows us to match (independent) discretizations within eac
h solid and to express the contact conditions in a satisfying way. The
n, we carry out a numerical analysis of the algorithm and, using a boo
tstrap argument, we give an upper bound of the convergence rate simila
r to that already obtained for compatible grids.