Shape derivatives for the penalty formulation of contact problems with Tresca friction

TL;DR

This paper develops shape derivatives for optimizing the contact zone in elastic bodies with Tresca friction, addressing non-differentiability issues and providing numerical results using gradient descent.

Contribution

It derives shape derivatives for contact problems with Tresca friction, overcoming non-differentiability challenges and enabling gradient-based shape optimization.

Findings

Derived sufficient conditions for shape differentiability.

Implemented a gradient descent algorithm for shape optimization.

Presented numerical results demonstrating the method's effectiveness.

Abstract

In this article, the shape optimization of a linear elastic body subject to frictional (Tresca) contact is investigated. Due to the projection operators involved in the formulation of the contact problem, the solution is not shape differentiable in general. Moreover, shape optimization of the contact zone requires the computation of the gap between the bodies in contact, as well as its shape derivative. Working with directional derivatives, sufficient conditions for shape differentiability are derived. %The problem is addressed in the general framework of two bodies with smooth boundaries. Then, some numerical results, obtained with a gradient descent algorithm based on those shape derivatives, are presented.