On the modeling of frictional contact problems using variational inequalities

Abstract

This article is devoted to the development and implementation of a variational inequalities approach to treat the general frictional contact problem. The current investigation adopts a two step algorithm for the solution of the general variational inequality representing the frictional contact problem using quadratic programming and Lagrange multipliers. The proposed method avoids user defined penalty parameters in step I and guarantees the imposition of the contact constraints in step II thus leading to improved accuracy. To establish the validity of the method, test cases are examined and compared with existing solutions where penalty methods are employed.