A REVIEW OF 3 ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO MODELING FRICTIONAL CONTACT PROBLEMS USING THE BOUNDARY-ELEMENT METHOD

This paper reviews three alternative boundary element approaches to mo delling contact problems with frictional slipping developed by the pre sent authors. The first method is based on node-on-node matching along the interface while the other two allow an independent discretization of the contacting bodies. The various features and the relative merit s and demerits of each approach are described, and results obtained fr om the three approaches are compared for some practical examples invol ving frictional slipping at the interface. The approaches are develope d for two-dimensional and axisymmetric problems with linearly elastic material behaviour and under static and proportional loading condition s.