Isotropic damage analysis of frictional contact problems using quadratic meshless boundary element method

•A meshless BEM using radial point integration is presented for isotropic damage analysis of frictional contact problems.•An exponential evolution equation for the damage variable is adopted.•It is shown to be a very promising computational tool without resorting to the use of intensive internal nodes.

In this paper, a quadratic meshless boundary element formulation for isotropic damage analysis of contact problems with friction is presented. To evaluate domain-related integrals due to the damage effects, the radial integration method (RIM) based on the use of the approximating the normalized displacements in the domain integrals by a series of prescribed radial basis functions (RBF) is employed. An exponential evolution equation for the damage variable is adopted. The details of coupling the different systems of equations for each body in contact under the several contact conditions are given to obtain the overall system of equations. Numerical examples covering shrink-fit and frictional punch problems are given to demonstrate the efficiency of the present meshless BEM.