Solving 2D transient rolling contact problems using the BEM and mathematical programming techniques

This work presents a new approach to the transient rolling contact of two-dimensional elastic bodies. A solution will be obtained by minimizing a general B-differentiable function representing the equilibrium equations and the contact conditions at each time step. Inertial effects are not taken into account and the boundary element method is used to compute the elastic influence coefficients of the surface points involved in contact (equilibrium equations). The contact conditions are represented with the help of variational inequalities and projection functions. Finally, the minimization problem is solved using the Generalized Newton's Method with line search. The results are compared with some example problems and the influence of discretization and integration time step on the results is discussed. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.