An accurate quadrature technique for the contact boundary in 3D finite element computations

Abstract

This paper presents a new numerical integration technique for 3D contact finite element implementations, focusing on a remedy for the inaccurate integration due to discontinuities at the boundary of contact surfaces. The method is based on the adaptive refinement of the integration domain along the boundary of the contact surface, and is accordingly denoted RBQ for refined boundary quadrature. It can be used for common element types of any order, e.g. Lagrange, NURBS, or T-Spline elements. In terms of both computational speed and accuracy, RBQ exhibits great advantages over a naive increase of the number of quadrature points. Also, the RBQ method is shown to remain accurate for large deformations. Furthermore, since the sharp boundary of the contact surface is determined, it can be used for various purposes like the accurate post-processing of the contact pressure. Several examples are presented to illustrate the new technique.