A cell-based smoothed finite element method for multi-body contact analysis using linear complementarity formulation

In this paper, the cell-based smoothed finite element using quadrilateral elements (CS-FEM) is used for 2D contact problems which are converted into linear complementarity problems (LCPs), which can be solved efficiently using the Lemke method. The modified Coulomb friction contact model with tangential strength and normal adhesion is considered, which models sticking-slipping, contacting-departing, and bonding-debonding processes, in a unified formulation. Smoothed Galerkin weak-form with contact boundary is deduced, in which the stiffness is implemented using the CS-FEM with 1 smoothing domain (1SD), 2SD, 3SD, 4SD, 8SD, and 16SD for each element. Contact interface equations are discretized through contact point-pairs that are constructed using a master-slave surface algorithm. Intensive numerical examples are given to investigate the effects of contact parameters on contact behaviors and examine the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The numerical results of CS-FEM models are compared with that of FEM-Q4 model, which demonstrates that all CS-FEM models are softer than FEM-Q4 model. The strain energy solutions, obtained using several CS-FEM models, are monotonically decreasing with the number of the SDs for each element increasing. The upper bound solutions in strain energy can be obtained using a CS-FEM-1SD model in our examples, while the lower bound solutions are obtained using CS-FEM-16SD model or FEM-Q4, with FEM-Q4 solution being the lowest.