Numerical and experimental investigations of contact in thin and thick rings

The objective of this study is to obtain the appropriate variational inequalities formulation corresponding to shell contact. Specifically, the work is concerned with the prediction of the nonlinear deformation behaviour as well as the stress and strain states resulting from contact in thin rings. The new formulations account for large deformations and rotations in a total Lagrangian framework by adopting the second Piola-Kirchhoff stress and the Green-Lagrange strain measures. In order to validate the newly proposed numerical approach, detailed photoelastic and strain gauge measurements were conducted using different rings. Two aspects of the work were accordingly examined. The first is concerned with the validation of the developed algorithms, while the second is concerned with the variation of the contact pressure with the thickness of the ring; The results reveal close agreement between the numerical predictions and the experimentally measured values. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.