Static weak form with normal contact

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This page extends the Static weak form used in AMPSSIE to include the normal-contact forces being imposed on the material points, following the approach of Bird et al. ¹.

Weak statement of equilibrium with normal contact

The Galerkin weak statement of equilibrium given on the Static weak form is extended with a normal contact term which imposes a load on the material points. The weak form which includes contact is defined:

\[\int_{\varphi_t(E)}[\nabla_x S_{vp}]^{T}\{\sigma\} \text{d}v - \int_{\varphi_t(E)}[S_{vp}]^{T}\{b\} \text{d}v - \int_{\varphi_t(\partial E)}[S_{vp}]^{T}\{t\} \text{d}s- \int_{\varphi_t(\partial\Omega)}\{F_{N,v}^{\partial\Omega}\}\,\text{d}s = \{0\}\]

where \(\{F_{N,v}^{\partial\Omega}\}\) is the normal contact traction applied on the part of the material boundary, \(\partial\Omega\), that is in contact with the rigid body. The first three are terms are repeated and described on the Static weak form page.

Gap function

The gap function is used to both detect contact and measure the overlap between contact surfaces. Here a point-to-surface formulation is used, see Wriggers ² and the work of Curnier and coworkers ³⁴ for exceptional pieces of literature.

The geometric measure of overlap between the deformable material and the rigid body is the normal gap function, \(g_N\), defined as the signed projection of a material-point position, \(\mathbf{x}\), onto its closest point, \(\mathbf{x}'\), on the rigid-body surface along the outward surface normal, \(\mathbf{n}\):

\[g_N = (\mathbf{x} - \mathbf{x}') \cdot \mathbf{n}.\]

The closest point, \(\mathbf{x}'\), is obtained by Closest Point Projection (CPP) of \(\mathbf{x}\) onto the discretised rigid-body surface. With this sign convention \(g_N > 0\) corresponds to separation, \(g_N = 0\) to a closed contact and \(g_N < 0\) to penetration.

The gap function and the normal contact pressure values are governed by the Signorini-Hertz-Moreau conditions

\[g_N \geq 0, \quad p_N \leq 0, \quad g_N\, p_N = 0,\]

i.e. the gap can only open (\(g_N > 0\)) when there is no compressive contact pressure (\(p_N = 0\)), and a compressive contact pressure (\(p_N < 0\)) can only arise when the gap is closed (\(g_N = 0\)).

Penalty regularisation

The penalty regulation softens the Signorini-Hertz-Moreau conditions as a small amount of penetration is needed to generate a contact force to resist contact. The penalty force is calculated like this,

\[p_N = \epsilon_N\, g_N,\]

with \(\epsilon_N\) the normal penalty stiffness. In AMPSSIE the penalty stiffness for each GIMP in contact is built from the GIMP's own material and geometry,

\[\epsilon_N = p_f\, E_p\, A_p^0,\]

where \(E_p\) is the GIMP's Young's modulus, \(A_p^0 = (V_p^0)^{2/3}\) is a representative undeformed contact area constructed from the initial GIMP volume, \(V_p^0\), and \(p_f\) is a user-controlled penalty factor that trades off interpenetration against conditioning of the global stiffness matrix. This penalty pressure is the contact force per unit area that enters the weak form above through \(\{F_{N,v}^{\partial\Omega}\}\). A worked study of \(p_f\) on a stiff penalty problem is presented in Tutorial 2.

Computational proceedure

(coming soon)

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1. Robert E. Bird, Giuliano Pretti, William M. Coombs, Charles E. Augarde, Yaseen U. Sharif, Michael J. Brown, Gareth Carter, Catriona Macdonald, and Kirstin Johnson. A dynamic implicit 3D material point-to-rigid body contact approach for large deformation analysis. International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, 2025. ↩

2. Peter Wriggers. Computational Contact Mechanics. Springer, 2nd edition, 2006. ↩

3. G. Pietrzak and A. Curnier. Large deformation frictional contact mechanics: continuum formulation and augmented Lagrangian treatment. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 177(3-4):351–381, 1999. ↩

4. A. Curnier, Q.-C. He, and A. Klarbring. Continuum mechanics modelling of large deformation contact with friction. In Contact Mechanics, pages 145–158. Springer, 1995. ↩