Boundary augmented Lagrangian method for contact problems in linear elasticity

Abstract

An augmented Lagrangian method, based on the fixed point method and boundary variational formulations, is designed and analysed for frictionless contact problems in linear elasticity. Using the equivalence between the contact boundary condition and a fixed point problem, we develop a new iterative algorithm that formulates the contact problem into a sequence of corresponding linear variational equations with the Steklov–Poincaré operator. Both theoretical results and numerical experiments show that the method presented is efficient.