NONLINEAR DYNAMIC CONTACT USING VARIATIONAL INEQUALITIES: THEORY AND APPLICATIONS

Undoubtedly, dynamic contact plays a major role in dictating the mechanical integrity of engineering components and assemblies. In this presentation, three aspects of the work are examined: (i) the development of appropriate dynamic variational inequalities expressions to accurately and consistently represent dynamic contact problems, (ii) the development of robust solution algorithms that guarantee the accurate imposition of the kinematic contact constraint and avoid interpenetration of the mating bodies, and (iii) evaluate the integrity of realistic engineering applications using the newly developed variational inequalities algorithms. These applications include crashworthiness, fretting damage in gas turbine engines and finger implants.