A BOUNDARY-ELEMENT PROCEDURE FOR CONTACT PROBLEMS IN PLANE LINEAR ELASTOSTATICS

Here we present a new solution procedure for contact problems in plane linear elastostatics via boundary integral variational inequalities having as unknowns the trace of the displacement field and its boundary traction. We admit the case of only traction-contact boundary conditions without prescribing the displacements along some part of the boundary of the elasticly deformed body. Without imposing any regularity assumption we establish norm convergence of piecewise polynomial boundary element approximations for mechanically definite problems. In detail we investigate piecewise quadratic and piecewise cubic approximations to the displacement field which lead to nonconform approximation schemes.