Frictional contact of flexible and rigid bodies

 This paper is about planar frictional contact problems of both flexible and rigid bodies. For the flexible case a nonlinear finite element formulation is presented, which is based on a modified Coulomb friction law. Stick-slip motion is incorporated into the formulation through a radial return mapping scheme. Linearly interpolating four node elements and three node contact elements are utilized for the finite element discretization. The corresponding tangent stiffness matrices and residual vectors of the equations of motion are presented. In the rigid body case the contact problem is divided into impact and continual contact, which are mathematically described by linear complementarity problems. The impact in normal direction is modeled by a modified Poisson hypothesis, which is adapted to allow multiple impacts. The formulation of the tangential impact is grounded on Coulombs law of friction. The normal contact forces of the continual contact are such that colliding bodies are prevented from penetration and the corresponding tangential forces are expressed by Coulombs law of friction. Examples and comparisions between the different methods are presented. Received: 10 January 2001     

A large deformation frictional contact formulation using NURBS‐based isogeometric analysis

This paper focuses on the application of NURBS‐based isogeometric analysis to Coulomb frictional contact problems between deformable bodies, in the context of large deformations. A mortar‐based approach is presented to treat the contact constraints, whereby the discretization of the continuum is performed with arbitrary order NURBS, as well as C⁰‐continuous Lagrange polynomial elements for comparison purposes. The numerical examples show that the proposed contact formulation in conjunction with the NURBS discretization delivers accurate and robust predictions. Results of lower quality are obtained from the Lagrange discretization, as well as from a different contact formulation based on the enforcement of the contact constraints at every integration point on the contact surface. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Smooth C1‐interpolations for two‐dimensional frictional contact problems

Finite deformation contact problems are associated with large sliding in the contact area. Thus, in the discrete problem a slave node can slide over several master segments. Standard contact formulations of surfaces discretized by low order finite elements leads to sudden changes in the surface normal field. This can cause loss of convergence properties in the solution procedure and furthermore may initiate jumps in the velocity field in dynamic solutions. Furthermore non‐smooth contact discretizations can lead to incorrect results in special cases where a good approximation of the contacting surfaces is needed. In this paper a smooth contact discretization is developed which circumvents most of the aformentioned problems. A smooth deformed surface with no slope discontinuities between segments is obtained by a C¹‐continuous interpolation of the master surface. Different forms of discretizations are possible. Among these are Bézier, Hermitian or other types of spline interpolations. In this paper we compare two formulations which can be used to obtain smooth normal and tangent fields for frictional contact of deformable bodies. The formulation is developed for two‐dimensional applications and includes finite deformation behaviour. Examples show the performance of the new discretization technique for contact. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Decomposition contact response (DCR) for explicit finite element dynamics

We propose a new explicit contact algorithm for finite element discretized solids and shells with smooth and non‐smooth geometries. The equations of motion are integrated in time with a predictor‐corrector‐type algorithm. After each predictor step, the impenetrability constraints and the exchange of momenta between the impacting bodies are considered and enforced independently. The geometrically inadmissible penetrations are removed using closest point projections or similar updates. Penetration is measured using the signed volume of intersection described by the contacting surface elements, which is well‐defined for both smooth and non‐smooth geometries. For computing the instantaneous velocity changes that occur during the impact event, we introduce the decomposition contact response method. This enables the closed‐form solution of the jump equations at impact, and applies to non‐frictional as well as frictional contact, as exemplified by the Coulomb frictional model. The overall algorithm has excellent momentum and energy conservation characteristics, as several numerical examples demonstrate. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A formulation of arbitrarily shaped surface elements for three-dimensional large deformation contact with friction

The paper introduces a general theory for the numerical simulation of large deformation contact problems. The contacting bodies under consideration may be of two- or three-dimensional shape modelled by finite elements. A contact finite element which can be applied to handle multi-body contact as well as contact with rigid bodies is developed. The element is universal in the sense that it can be used as a surface element for any known finite element model and includes friction. The frictional behaviour of the model obeys Coulomb's law of friction distinguishing between sticking and sliding contact. The algorithmic treatment is based on a penalty formulation for the normal and sticking contact. The corresponding consistent tangential stiffness matrices are derived, leading to an overall quadratic convergence behaviour for the method. This feature is demonstrated in a number of representative examples. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Extension of the node‐to‐segment contact element for surface‐expansion‐dependent contact laws

A class of friction laws depending on the measure of contact surface expansion is defined in the paper within the continuum contact mechanics framework. The nominal and spatial forms of constitutive relations are discussed, including incremental penalty relations. Further, an extended node‐to‐segment element is derived which is capable of treating surface‐expansion‐dependent contact laws in a consistent way. The approach is suitable for any kind of node‐to‐segment contact elements. Finally, the computational efficiency of the extended element as well as other possible approaches are illustrated by numerical examples relevant to metal forming applications. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the modelling of smooth contact surfaces using cubic splines

In this paper, a new strategy for the smooth representation of 2D contact surfaces is developed and implemented. The contact surfaces are modelled using cubic splines which interpolate the finite element nodes. These splines provide a unique surface normal vector and do not require prior knowledge of surface tangents and normals. C²‐continuous cubic splines are suitable for representing rigid contact surfaces, while C¹‐continuous Overhauser splines are shown to be most suitable for representing flexible contact surfaces. A consistent linearization of the kinematic contact constraints, based on the spline interpolation, is derived. The new spline‐based contact surface interpolation scheme does not influence the element calculations. Consequently, it can be easily implemented in standard FE codes. Several numerical examples are used to illustrate the advantages of the proposed smooth representation of contact surfaces. The results show a significantimprovement in accuracy compared to traditional piecewise element‐based surface interpolation. The predicted contact stresses are also less sensitive to the mismatch in the meshes of the different contacting bodies. This property is useful for problems where the contact area is unknown a priori and when there is significant tangential slip. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A mortar‐finite element formulation for frictional contact problems

In this paper a finite element formulation is developed for the solution of frictional contact problems. The novelty of the proposed formulation involves discretizing the contact interface with mortar elements, originally proposed for domain decomposition problems. The mortar element method provides a linear transformation of the displacement field for each boundary of the contacting continua to an intermediate mortar surface. On the mortar surface, contact kinematics are easily evaluated on a single discretized space. The procedure provides variationally consistent contact pressures and assures the contact surface integrals can be evaluated exactly. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A node‐to‐node scheme with the aid of variable‐node elements for elasto‐plastic contact analysis

A strategy for a two‐dimensional contact analysis involving finite strain plasticity is developed with the aid of variable‐node elements. The variable‐node elements, in which nodes are added freely where they are needed, make it possible to transform the non‐matching meshes into matching meshes directly. They thereby facilitate an efficient analysis, maintaining node‐to‐node contact during the contact deformation. The contact patch test, wherein the contact patch is constructed out of variable‐node elements, is thus passed, and iterations for equilibrium solutions reach convergence faster in this scheme than in the conventional approach based on the node‐to‐surface contact. The effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed scheme are demonstrated through several numerical examples of elasto‐plastic contact analyses. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A new finite element approach for solving three‐dimensional problems using trimmed hexahedral elements

In this paper, a novel finite element approach is presented to solve three‐dimensional problems using trimmed hexahedral elements generated by cutting a simple block consisting of regular hexahedral elements with a computer‐aided design (CAD) surface. Trimmed hexahedral elements, which are polyhedral elements with curved faces, are placed at the boundaries of finite element models, and regular hexahedral elements remain in the interior regions. Shape functions for trimmed hexahedral elements are developed by using moving least square approximation with harmonic weight functions based on an extension of Wachspress coordinates to curved faces. A subdivision of polyhedral domains into tetrahedral sub‐domains is performed to construct shape functions for trimmed hexahedral elements, and numerical integration of the weak form can be carried out consistently over the tetrahedral sub‐domains. Trimmed hexahedral elements have similar properties to conventional finite elements regarding the continuity, the completeness, the node–element connectivity, and the inter‐element compatibility. Numerical examples for three‐dimensional linear elastic problems with complex geometries show the efficiency and effectiveness of the present method. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hermite polynomial smoothing in beam-to-beam frictional contact

In this paper a smoothing procedure is suggested for the 3D beam-to-beam contact. A smooth segment is defined basing on current position vectors of three nodes limiting two adjacent finite elements. The approximated fragment of a beam axis as a 3D curve spans between the centre points of these elements. The curve is described parametrically using three Hermite polynomials. The four boundary conditions necessary to determine the coefficients for each of these polynomials involve co-ordinates and slopes at the curve ends. The slopes are defined in terms of the element nodal co-ordinates, too. There is no dependence on nodal rotations so this formulation can be embedded in a beam analysis using any type of beam finite element. This geometric representation of the curve is incorporated into the 3D beam-to-beam frictional contact model with the penalty method used to enforce contact constraints. The residual vector and the corresponding tangent stiffness matrix are determined for the normal part of contact and for the stick or slip state of friction. A few numerical examples are presented to show the performance of the suggested smoothing procedure in the cases featuring large frictional sliding.     

A multiscale large time increment/FAS algorithm with time‐space model reduction for frictional contact problems

A multiscale strategy using model reduction for frictional contact computation is presented. This new approach aims to improve computation time of finite element simulations involving frictional contact between linear and elastic bodies. This strategy is based on a combination between the LATIN (LArge Time INcrement) method and the FAS multigrid solver. The LATIN method is an iterative solver operating on the whole time‐space domain. Applying an a posteriori analysis on solutions of different frictional contact problems shows a great potential as far as reducibility for frictional contact problems is concerned. Time‐space vectors forming the so‐called reduced basis depict particular scales of the problem. It becomes easy to make analogies with multigrid method to take full advantage of multiscale information. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A contact analysis approach based on linear complementarity formulation using smoothed finite element methods

Based on the subdomain parametric variational principle (SPVP), a contact analysis approach is formulated in the incremental form for 2D solid mechanics problems discretized using only triangular elements. The present approach is implemented for the newly developed node-based smoothed finite element method (NS-FEM), the edge-based smoothed finite element method (ES-FEM) as well as standard FEM models. In the approach, the contact interface equations are discretized by contact point-pairs using a modified Coulomb frictional contact model. For strictly imposing the contact constraints, the global discretized system equations are transformed into a standard linear complementarity problem (LCP), which can be readily solved using the Lemke method. This approach can simulate different contact behaviors including bonding/debonding, contacting/departing, and sticking/slipping. An intensive numerical study is conducted to investigate the effects of various parameters and validate the proposed method. The numerical results have demonstrated the validity and efficiency of the present contact analysis approach as well as the good performance of the ES-FEM method, which provides solutions of about 10 times better accuracy and higher convergence rate than the FEM and NS-FEM methods. The results also indicate that the NS-FEM provides upper-bound solutions in energy norm, relative to the fact that FEM provides lower-bound solutions.     

A continuum-based finite element formulation for the implicit solution of multibody,large deformation-frictional contact problems

In this paper, a formulation is presented for the finite element treatment of multibody, large deformation frictional contact problems. The term multibody is used to mean that when two bodies mechanically contact, both may be deformable. A novel aspect of the approach advocated is that the equations governing contact are developed in the continuum setting first, before deriving the corresponding finite element equations This feature distinguishes the current work from many earlier treatments of contact problems and renders it considerably more general. In particular, the approach yields a characterization of the frictional constraint (assuming a Coulomb law) suitable for arbitrary discretizations in either two or three dimensions. A geometric framework is constructed within which both frictionless and frictional response are naturally described, making subsequent finite element discretization a straightforward substitution of finite-dimensional solution spaces for their continuum counterparts. To our knowledge, this general formulation and implementation of the frictional contact problem in a finite element setting has not been reported previously in the literature. The development includes exact linearization of the statement of virtual work, which enables optimal convergence properties for Newton-Raphson solution strategies, and which appears to be highly desirable (if not essential) for the general robustness of implicit finite element techniques. Since the theory and subsequent linearization require no limitations on the amount of deformation or relative sliding that can occur, the resulting treatment of frictional contact is suitable for a wide range of examples displaying significant non-linear behaviour. This assertion is substantiated through presentation of a variety of examples in both two and three dimensions.     

Improvement of a frictional contact algorithm for strongly curved contact problems

One of the challenges in contact problems is the prediction of the actual contact surface and the kind of contact that is established in each region. In numerical simulation of deep drawing problems the contact conditions change continuously during the forming process, increasing the importance of a correct evaluation of these parameters at each load step. In this work a new contact search algorithm devoted to contact between a deformable and a rigid body is presented. The rigid body is modelled by parametric Bézier surfaces, whereas the deformable body is discretized with finite elements. The numerical schemes followed rely on a frictional contact algorithm that operates directly on the parametric Bézier surfaces. The algorithm is implemented in the deep drawing implicit finite element code DD3IMP. This code uses a mechanical model that takes into account the large elastoplastic strains and rotations. The Coulomb classical law models the frictional contact problem, which is treated with an augmented Lagrangian approach. A fully implicit algorithm of Newton–Raphson type is used to solve within a single iterative loop the non‐linearities related with the frictional contact problem and the elastoplastic behaviour of the deformable body. The numerical simulations presented demonstrate the performance of the contact search algorithm in an example with complex tools geometry. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.