An augmented lagrangian method to solve three-dimensional nonlinear contact problems

Abstract

A finite element formulation to deal with the friction contact problem between an elastic body and a rigid foundation is presented. An augmented Lagrangian method, which incorporates two Lagrange multipliers and a slack variable in the constraint equation, is developed. In this method, the solution is achieved through a Newton-Raphson monolithic iterative strategy and leads to simple implementation. Examples are provided to demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed algorithm.