A BOUNDARY ELEMENT AND MATHEMATICAL-PROGRAMMING APPROACH FOR FRICTIONAL CONTACT PROBLEMS

A general solution method for three-dimensional quasistatic frictional contact problems is presented. It is based on the direct boundary element formulation with substructuring and a particular mathematical programming technique identified as the parametric linear complementarity problem (PLCP) with mixed complementary conditions. A solution algorithm that deals with the special form of PLCP is presented and allows one to define and check a criterion assessing the algorithm convergence. The frictional law is represented by a piecewise linear approximation of the Coulomb's friction cone which, when combined with the spatial discretization, yields a solution process that is linear in 'time' and thus not requiring an explicit time discretization of the original problem.