A Computional Moddel For Elastic-Plastic Dynamic Contact

The dynamic contact problem has received considerable attention mrecent years. from the physical point of view, there is a wide field uponwhich the dynamic contact problem could be applied, such as in nuclearpower plants, automotive industry, aircraft industry and defence industry.The other side of interest, is the mathematical one, where the highlynon-linear complexities arise, such as the change of kinematics boundaryconditions, the large deformations in addition to material nonlinearities.To deal with a real structure, the structural damping should be accountedfor in addition to the friction of joints. If these effects are considered inthe solution of the problem, it will become cumbersome.Plastic flow is an important aspect to be considered, especially in thedynamic contact problems, since in spite of elastic loading, plastic flowmay be reached in the contact zone due to high stresses in this region.Considerations of the above points have led to the objective of the presentwork which has two folds. The first is to develop a computational modelto simulate the dynamic contact of deformable bodies having the visco-elastic-plastic material behaviour. The proposed model is an incrementalvariational one, based on a previously developed incremental convexprogrammmg procedure. Finite element method is adopted as adiscretization engine, in addition Ralyiegh method is used to represent thestructural damping. Prandtl-Reuss constitutive relations in conjunction ofvon-Mises criterion have been used to determine plastic flow.