A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF CONTACT PROBLEMS SOLUTION BASED ON THE PENALTY AND LAGRANGE MULTIPLIER APPROACHES

Numerical models based on the penalty and Lagrange multiplier method for contact problems with friction are compared in this paper. The presented approaches, with use of Coulomb’s frictional law, elasto-plastic tangential slip decomposition, and consistent linearization, result in quadratic rates of convergence with the Newton-Raphson iteration. A standard contact search algorithm independent of the formulation is used for the detection of contact between previously separate meshes and for the application of displacement constraints where contact was identified. The models have been implemented into a version of the computational finite element program PAK [3]. Numerical examples that illustrate performance of the described procedures are given.