Analysis of slender structural elements under unilateral contact constraints

Abstract

A numerical methodology is presented in this paper for the geometrically non-linear analysis of slender uni-dimensional structural elements under unilateral contact constraints. The finite element method together with an updated Lagrangian formulation is used to study the structural system. The unilateral constraints are imposed by tensionless supports or foundations. At each load step, in order to obtain the contact regions, the equilibrium equations are linearized and the contact problem is treated directly as a minimisation problem with inequality constraints, resulting in a linear complementarity problem (LCP). After the resulting LCP is solved by Lemke`s pivoting algorithm, the contact regions are identified and the Newton-Raphson method is used together with path following methods to obtain the new contact forces and equilibrium configurations. The proposed methodology is illustrated by two examples and the results are compared with numerical and experimental results found in literature.