Contact problem in solid mechanics

[Yuxiang Wang]

Dear FEniCS community,

I am currently trying to solve a problem where one deformable body is pushing into another piece of deformable shell. The problem would roughly look like the picture below:

I found that there are well-established shell elements in fenics-shells, but did not find any examples on the contact problem. The only example of "contact", demo_contact-vi-snes, is much simpler than what I needed because when I have two deformable bodies I do not know the prescribed boundary condition.

I know that most FEA packages uses penalty or lagrangian methods for contact implementation - would there be similar examples with FEniCS?

Any inputs would be appreciated. Thanks!

Shawn

[Yuxiang Wang]

Oops - sorry that I realized I've been unclear.

When I say "when I have two deformable bodies I do not know the prescribed boundary condition", I meant that the actual displacement constraints at the contact area was unknown, as for most contact problems. I do know the BCs controlling the two bodies elsewhere (not on area where contact is happening).

Shawn

[Marco Morandini]

On 03/25/2018 06:33 PM, Yuxiang Wang wrote:
> Dear FEniCS community,
>
> I am currently trying to solve a problem where one deformable body is
> pushing into another piece of deformable shell. The problem would
> roughly look like the picture below:
>

> <https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-D34FwjTtXhM/WrfNHt4BRlI/AAAAAAAAnro/SawRz2Iho5gEBQyCcl5tddfMYOMnoVrvwCLcBGAs/s1600/maxresdefault.jpg>
>

I do not think that Fenics is the right tool for this type of problems.
At least, not yet.

I'd love to be proven false.

Marco

> I found that there are well-established shell elements in fenics-shells,
> but did not find any examples on the contact problem. The only example
> of "contact", demo_contact-vi-snes, is much simpler than what I needed
> because when I have two deformable bodies I do not know the prescribed
> boundary condition.
>
> I know that most FEA packages uses penalty or lagrangian methods for
> contact implementation - would there be similar examples with FEniCS?
>
> Any inputs would be appreciated. Thanks!
>
> Shawn
>

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[Yuxiang Wang]

Hi Marco,

Thank you for your response!

If you don't mind, could you please elaborate a bit more on the architectural limits on FEniCS that make it difficult?

Thank you,

Shawn

> <mailto:fenics-support+unsub...@googlegroups.com>.

[Mike Welland]

Hi Yuxiang, 

I suggest you repost your question on the community q&a board (this mailing list is typically for installation support). 

https://www.allanswered.com/community/s/fenics-project/

Mike

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> <mailto:fenics-suppor...@googlegroups.com>.

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[Yuxiang Wang]

Thanks! Sorry Thai didn't know that. Will do.

Best,

Shawn

--
Yuxiang "Shawn" Wang, PhD
Biomechanical experiments & simulations
yw...@virginia.edu
+1 (434) 284-0836