A barrier method for frictional contact on embedded interfaces

Understand

We present a barrier method for treating frictional contact on interfaces embedded in finite elements.

• The barrier treatment has several attractive features, including: (i) it does not introduce any additional degrees of freedom or iterative steps, (ii) it is free of inter-penetration, (iii) it avoids an ill-conditioned matrix system, and (iv) it allows one to control the solution accuracy directly.
• We derive the contact pressure from a smooth barrier energy function that is designed to satisfy the non-penetration constraint.
• Likewise, we make use of a smoothed friction law in which the stick-slip transition is described by a continuous function of the slip displacement.