A FRICTIONAL CONTACT ELEMENT FOR STRONGLY CURVED CONTACT PROBLEMS

Based on a mixed formulation approach; a frictional contact element is proposed for the numerical solution of contact problems including str ongly curved rigid obstacles. The implementation of the frictional con tact element is analogous to that of a finite element. This feature fa cilitates its implementation in implicit finite element programmes, si nce the structure of the code need not be modified: For efficient mode lling of the forming tool geometries by Computer Aided Geometric Desig n techniques and in order to achieve a high performance of the Contact search, the numerical schemes of the frictional contact element opera te directly on parametric polynomial surface patches. Thus, no discret ization of curved contact surfaces is performed. Numerical simulations of deep drawing processes demonstrate the performance of the method i n the case of large sliding increments upon curved tools and in the ca se of elasto-plasticity.