BEM SOLUTION OF 2-DIMENSIONAL CONTACT PROBLEMS BY WEAK APPLICATION OFCONTACT CONDITIONS WITH NONCONFORMING DISCRETIZATIONS

Non-conforming discretizations of the surfaces involved in the contact problem are sometimes required, due to the geometry and/or the load. A strong application of the contact conditions directly relating varia bles (displacements and tractions) of the nodes of the discretizations , a general approach called by the authors node-to-point contact schem e, may lead to unsatisfactory results. In this paper, a weak applicati on of the contact conditions, by means of the principle of virtual wor k, is developed for boundary integral equations. The formulation is pr esented for two-dimensional problems without or with friction, using t he Coulomb model. The modelization is made using the Boundary Element Method and the problem is solved with an incremental procedure based o n a displacement scaling approach. The solution scheme proposed is app licable to any contact problem (with small:or large displacements) and is validated in this paper by applying it to receding, conforming and advancing contact problems, the jumps in the contact stresses that ap peared in node-to-point contact schemes, not having been found in the problems tested. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.