Modelling unilateral frictionless contact using the null-space method and cubic B-Spline interpolation

Author (s): Muñoz, J.J.
Journal: Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering

Volume: 197, Issues 9-12
Pages: 979 – 993
Date: 2008

Abstract:
The analysis of unilateral sliding contact in elasticity is equivalent to a minimisation
problem subjected to a set of inequality constraints. However, the presence of
boundary discontinuities, such as those stemming from the spatial discretisation,
appears as a major problem to determine the set of active constraints. This work
introduces a smoothing technique of the master surface resorting to cubic B-Spline
interpolation, which is C1 continuous in contact situations between elastic and rigid
bodies, and G1 continuous in elastic-elastic contact problems. The technique is applied
in conjunction with the null-space method, where the solution is searched in
an unconstrained manifold. The resulting formulation eases the contact transition
along the master surface, and recovers the quadratic convergence of the iterative
Newton-Raphson process. The robustness of the method is demonstrated using 2D
and 3D examples.

Journal paper (from the publisher)  
UPCommons page Link  

Bibtex:

@article{Muñoz2008979,
author = "J.J. Muñoz",
title = "Modelling unilateral frictionless contact using the null-space method and cubic B-Spline interpolation ",
journal = "Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering ",
volume = "197",
number = "9–12",
pages = "979 - 993",
year = "2008",
issn = "0045-7825",
doi = "http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cma.2007.09.022",
url = "http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0045782507004021",
}