Methods and algorithms for contact mechanics.

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Christian Hesch
• Subject Area: Mechanics
• Term: from 2014 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 256447575

Contact mechanics has become increasingly important in the field of computational mechanics since it can deal with a variety of industrial applications. Since the beginning of this century, many research projects focus on variationall consistent formulations in space and time. The central goal of the proposed research project is to develop a most common approach for consistent contact formulations, which can deal with the following properties of the contact surface: Both surfaces in contact undergo finite deformations, anisotropic effects of Coulomb's law and adhesive effects in normal directions.The formulation to be developed will be most common and largely independent of the chosen discretisation. In particular, Lagrangian meshes as well as NURBS and T-Splines within the context of isogeometric analysis are considered. Furthermore, potential fracture effects at the actual contact area will be considered as well, using modern phase-field methods. Various systems force the usage of implicit integrators. Therefore, structure preserving time integration schemes are to be developed for the sake of a numerically stable simulation.Summarised, a complete, modern and efficient contact model will be developed which can be applied to nearly all situations. The goal can be accomplished within only a single funding period due to preliminary work within the prior project.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Participating Person: Professor Dr.-Ing. Peter Betsch