Stabilized numerical solution for transient dynamic contact of inelastic solids on rough surfaces

A simulation technique to deal with transient dynamic contact of tire rubber compounds on rough road surfaces is presented. The segment-to-surface approach is used for modeling the contact between tire tread rubber and road track. While the rubber components are deformable and described by a sophisticated viscoelastic damage constitutive model, the road surface is assumed to be rigid and characterized by an analytical function. A spectral approach based on an inverse computation of the 2D-Fast Fourier transform has been suggested for the reconstruction of rough surface profiles. The Newmark time-stepping method is used for the integration of transient dynamic equations. With the so-called contact-stabilized Newmark method the spurious oscillation at contact boundary has been removed. The detailed investigation on the dynamic contact of inelastic rubber block with rough road surfaces has been made. The robustness of the contact-stabilized Newmark method within a finite deformation framework is underlined by numerical studies, in which it is compared with several dissipation-based stabilization techniques selected from literature.