FINITE-ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF ELASTIC CONTACT BETWEEN A SHELL OF REVOLUTION AND A RIGID PLATE

Elastic contact between a thick shell of revolution and a rigid plate in the case when the plate is brought into contact with the shell by g iving a finite displacement to the plate is analysed by the finite-ele ment method. Field-consistent higher-order strain-displacement relatio ns with vanishing shear stresses on the surfaces are used. A finite el ement based on these relations is developed and used for the analysis. The contact conditions are imposed by use of the Lagrangian multiplie rs method, and the resulting minimization problem is solved iterativel y. This procedure will lead to reduced memory requirements and computa tion time.