AN ANALYSIS OF FINITE ELEMENT-BASED CONTACT AND MESH-TYING ALGORITHMS

Panos Papadopoulos

Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-1740

The solution of boundary-value problems in solid and fluid mechanics
often involves interfaces between similar or dissimilar domains.  On
such interfaces, the underlying physics dictates that certain
conditions be enforced. The enforcement of such conditions, in turn,
poses numerical challenges arising from the choice of approximation
spaces, as well as from the geometry and discrete character of the
associated computational grids. In this talk, a mathematical framework
for the analysis of a class of such interface problems involving
contact between deformable solids will be reviewed and certain
convergent dual algorithms will be discussed within the context of the
finite element method.