A study on the dependency of the interface forces on the FE discretization in nonconvex-nonsmooth frictional contact problems

Abstract

In this paper, the effect of the FE discretization density on the results of both convex and nonconvex-nonsmooth frictional contact and adhesive contact interface problems is investigated. The tool for this study is a variational formulation leading to an iterative method for the numerical solution of the arising nonconvex-nonsmooth optimization problems. Various cases of monotone and nonmonotone interface laws are considered and interesting results are obtained.