A solution method for dynamic contact problems

An efficient method is presented for analyzing the transient dynamic contact problems of elastic bodies in this paper. This approach exploits the Lagrange multiplier concept and a special time integration algorithm. Due to the introduced high-frequency dissipation in this time integration algorithm, this method can lead to the effective analysis of real response of elastic bodies with dynamic surface contact constraints. The results of numerical examples show that this method can avoid the weakness of the classical Lagrange multiplier method in dealing with dynamic contact problems with relatively high inertial forces. Stable results can be provided when the time integration step size is small. The properties of this method have also been discussed in this paper. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.