Zhu Hengshen,Zheng Qisheng,Wang Li.Equilibrium finite element method and strict error estimation for finite-slip contact problems[J].Acta Scientiarum Naturalium Universitatis Sunyatseni,2026,65(04):75-82.
DOI:
Zhu Hengshen,Zheng Qisheng,Wang Li.Equilibrium finite element method and strict error estimation for finite-slip contact problems[J].Acta Scientiarum Naturalium Universitatis Sunyatseni,2026,65(04):75-82.DOI: 10.11714/acta.snus.ZR20250258.
Equilibrium finite element method and strict error estimation for finite-slip contact problems
This paper proposes an interface-traction-based equilibrium finite element method combined with dual analysis theory to achieve high-precision stress solutions and strict a posteriori error estimation for finite sliding contact problems. First, the principle of minimum complementary energy for contact problems is derived within the framework of finite sliding. By introducing contact constraints, the problem is transformed into a quadratic programming problem. Subsequently,an traction-based equilibrium element is constructed using the macro-element technique and substituted into the principle of minimum complementary energy. Consequently,a high-precision equilibrium stress field that strictly satisfies the equilibrium equations is obtained. By combining the equilibrium stress field obtained from this method with the compatible displacement field from standard finite elements, the constitutive relation error (CRE) for contact problems can be derived and calculated. It is proven that this CRE serves as a strict upper bound for the discretization error. Finally, the proposed method is numerically verified through typical multi-body contact benchmarks, demonstrating its effectiveness in terms of solution accuracy, convergence, and discretization error estimation.
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