Computational Contact Mechanics

This is the second edition of the valuable reference source for numerical simulations of contact mechanics suitable for many fields like civil engineering, car design, aeronautics, metal forming, or biomechanics.

Boundary value problems involving contact are of great importance in industrial applications in engineering such as bearings, metal forming processes, rubber seals, drilling problems, crash analysis of cars, rolling contact between car tires and the road, cooling of electronic devices. . . Other applications are related to biomechanical engineering design where human joints, implants or teeth are of consideration. Due to this variety, contact problems are today combined either with large elastic or inelastic deformations including time dependent responses. Thermal coupling also might have to be considered. Even stability behaviour has to be linked to contact.

The topic of computational contact is described in depth providing an up-to-date treatment of different formulations, algorithms and discretisation techniques for contact problems which are established in the geometrically linear and nonlinear range. This book provides the necessary continuum mechanics background which includes the derivation of the contact constraints. Constitutive equations stemming from tribology which are valid at the contact interface are discussed in detail. Discretization schemes for small and finite deformations are discussed in depth. Solid and beam contact is considered as well as contact of unstable systems and thermomechanical contact. The algorithmic side covers a broad range of solution methods. Additionally adaptive discretisation techniques for contact analysis are presented as a modern tool for engineering design simulations.

The present text book is written for graduate, Masters and PhD students, but also for engineers in industry, who have to simulate contact problems in practical application and wish to understand the theoretical and algorithmic background of contact treatment in modern finite element systems.

For this second edition, illustrative simplified examples and new discretisation schemes as well as adaptive procedures for coupled problems are added.