Frictional contact of flexible and rigid bodies

Abstract

This paper is about planar frictional contact problems of both flexible and rigid bodies. For the flexible case a nonlinear finite element formulation is presented, which is based on a modified Coulomb friction law. Stick-slip motion is incorporated into the formulation through a radial return mapping scheme. Linearly interpolating four node elements and three node contact elements are utilized for the finite element discretization. The corresponding tangent stiffness matrices and residual vectors of the equations of motion are presented. In the rigid body case the contact problem is divided into impact and continual contact, which are mathematically described by linear complementarity problems. The impact in normal direction is modeled by a modified Poisson hypothesis, which is adapted to allow multiple impacts. The formulation of the tangential impact is grounded on Coulombs law of friction. The normal contact forces of the continual contact are such that colliding bodies are prevented from penetration and the corresponding tangential forces are expressed by Coulombs law of friction. Examples and comparisions between the different methods are presented.