BEM solution of two-dimensional contact problems by weak application of contact conditions with non-conforming discretizations

Non-conforming discretizations of the surfaces involved in the contact problem are sometimes required, due to the geometry and/or the load. A strong application of the contact conditions directly relating variables (displacements and tractions) of the nodes of the discretizations, a general approach called by the authors node-to-point contact scheme, may lead to unsatisfactory results. In this paper, a weak application of the contact conditions, by means of the principle of virtual work, is developed for boundary integral equations. The formulation is presented for two-dimensional problems without or with friction, using the Coulomb model. The modelization is made using the Boundary Element Method and the problem is solved with an incremental procedure based on a displacement scaling approach. The solution scheme proposed is applicable to any contact problem (with small or large displacements) and is validated in this paper by applying it to receding, conforming and advancing contact problems, the jumps in the contact stresses that appeared in node-to-point contact schemes, not having been found in the problems tested. © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved