The stick-slip decomposition method for modeling large-deformation Coulomb frictional contact

This paper discusses the issues associated with modeling frictional contact between solid bodies undergoing large deformations. The most common model for friction on contact interfaces in solid mechanics is the Coulomb friction model, in which two distinct responses are possible: stick and slip. Handling the transition between these two phases computationally has been a source of algorithmic instability, lack of convergence and non-unique solutions, particularly in the presence of large deformations. Most computational models for frictional contact have used penalty or updated Lagrangian approaches to enforce frictional contact conditions. These two approaches, however, present some computational challenges due to conditioning issues in penalty-type implementations and the iterative nature of the updated Lagrangian formulation, which, particularly in large simulations, may lead to relatively slow convergence. Alternatively, a plasticity-inspired implementation of frictional contact has been shown to handle the stick-slip conditions in a local, algorithmically efficient manner that substantially reduces computational cost and successfully avoids the issues of instability and lack of convergence often reported with other methods (Laursen and Simo 1993). The formulation of this approach, however, has been limited to the small deformations realm, a fact that severely limited its application to contact problems where large deformations are expected. In this paper, we present an algorithmically consistent formulation of this method that preserves its key advantages, while extending its application to the realm of large-deformation contact problems. We show that the method produces results similar to the augmented Lagrangian formulation at a reduced computational cost.