UNILATERAL CONTACT PROBLEM FOR FINITE BODIES - PARALLEL IMPLEMENTATION

A numerical solution of the three dimensional frictionless contact pro blem and its data parallel implementation on the Connection Machine Sy stem CM-2 is presented. The numerical solution is obtained by means of boundary element discretization of a variational inequality and relat ed extremum principle; the associated Green's function is approximated by means of standard direct boundary element procedure. A numerical m ethod is applicable to any kind of geometry of the contacting bodies u nder arbitrary loading. The example presented illustrate a distinct ab ility of the method to capture the influence of the shape and the size of a body on the contact area and the pressure acting in it. it has b een demonstrated that the symmetry properties of the Green's operator hold only asymptotically for the discretized problem.