Mortar-based surface-to-surface contact algorithms in large deformation solid mechanics

Abstract

The mortar element method is extremely useful in a variety of settings in computational mechanics, often when the optimal connection or "tying" of dissimilarly meshed domains is desired. This paper describes the benefits of applying such methods to a more complex application: large deformation contact analysis. Although the enhanced accuracy of such contact formulations is to be expected given their sound theoretical grounding, it also turns out that the spatial smoothing provided by mortar contact operators lends considerably more robustness than more traditional, node-to-surface approaches. Issues associated with efficient searching in the surface-to-surface framework are discussed, and some examples are summarized which demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach. © Springer 2006.