QUADRATIC-PROGRAMMING CONTACT FORMULATION FOR ELASTIC BODIES USING BOUNDARY-ELEMENT METHOD

A method for the analysis of contact of deformable bodies based on the boundary element method (BEM) has been presented in this paper. The contact problem is stated in the form of a convex quadratic programming (QP) problem written in terms of the contact tractions on the contact surface. A strategy for the incorporation of the BEM contact analysis into models whose domain may be discretized using the finite element method (FEM) has been investigated. A discussion concerning the merits of the proposed approach is provided and several examples are presented to illustrate the validity of the method.