Discontinuous deformation analysis based on complementary theory

The contact between blocks is treated by the open-close iteration in the conventional discontinuous deformation analysis (DDA), which needs to introduce spurious springs between two blocks in contact and to assume the normal stiffness and the tangential stiffness (the penalty factors). Unreasonable values of stiffness would result in numerical problems. To avoid the penalty factors and the open-close iteration, we reformulate the DDA as a mixed complementary problem (MiCP) and then choose the path Newton method (PNM) to solve the problem. Some examples including those originally designed by Shi are reanalyzed, which proves feasibility of the proposed procedure. Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 90715028), Research Project for Protection of High Cut Slopes in Three Gorges’ Reservoir (Grant No. 2008SXG01-2)