Author(s)

U. Nackenhorst

Abstract

An adaptive finite element method to analyse contact problems U. Nackenhorst Institute of Mechanics, University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg, D-22039 Hamburg, Germany Introduction Contact analysis aims to calculate the contact area, divided into stick and slip regions, as well as the contact tractions. Using discretisation methods such as the finite element method discretisation errors are unavoidable. In linear mechanics a couple of theories have been developed to es- timate the discretisation error and to predict better meshes for improved results [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. One of the most accepted methods has been proposed by ZlENKIEWlCZ and ZHU [3]. But there are known problems to satisfy the boundary conditions. And applications to nonlinear problems are not reported until now. Caused by these facts an improved error estimation method is proposed taking the boundary traction error into account. This proceeding seems to be natural because in engineering analysis the surface t

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