Solving dynamic contact problems with local refinement in space and time

Frictional dynamic contact problems with complex geometries are a challenging task – from the computational as well as from the analytical point of view – since they generally involve space and time multi-scale aspects.To be able to reduce the complexity of this kind of contact problem, we employ a non-conforming domain decomposition method in space, consisting of a coarse global mesh not resolving the local structure and an overlapping fine patch for the contact computation. This leads to several benefits: First, we resolve the details of the surface only where it is needed, i.e., in the vicinity of the actual contact zone. Second, the subproblems can be discretized independently of each other which enables us to choose a much finer time scale on the contact zone than on the coarse domain. Here, we propose a set of interface conditions that yield optimal a priori error estimates on the fine-meshed subdomain without any artificial dissipation. Further, we develop an efficient iterative solution scheme for the coupled problem that is robust with respect to jumps in the material parameters. Several complex numerical examples illustrate the performance of the new scheme.