Iterative Contact-resolving Hybrid Methods for Multiscale Contact Mechanics

TL;DR

This paper introduces an iterative hybrid method for multiscale contact mechanics that localizes nonlinear contact constraints, reducing complexity and improving stress approximation accuracy.

Contribution

It develops a novel two-subdomain framework combining linear and nonlinear contact constraint localization with multiple discretization strategies.

Findings

Effective reduction in degrees of freedom via multiscale techniques

Direct stress computation with local momentum conservation

Validated convergence and numerical performance

Abstract

Modeling contact mechanics with high contrast coefficients presents significant mathematical and computational challenges, especially in achieving strongly symmetric stress approximations for mixed formulations. Due to the inherent nonlinearity of contact problems, conventional methods that treat the entire domain as a monolithic system often lead to high global complexity. To address this, we develop an iterative contact-resolving hybrid method by localizing nonlinear contact constraints within a smaller subdomain, while the larger subdomain is governed by a linear system. Our system employs variational inequality theory, minimization principles, and penalty methods. More importantly, we propose four discretization types within the two-subdomain framework, ranging from applying standard/mixed FEM across the entire domain to combining standard/mixed multiscale methods in the larger subdomain with standard/mixed FEM in the smaller one. % The standard finite element method and standard constraint energy minimizing generalized multiscale finite element method are simple and easy to demonstrate. By employing a multiscale reduction technique, the method avoids excessive degrees of freedom inherent in conventional methods in the larger domain, while the mixed formulation enables direct stress computation, ensures local momentum conservation, and resists locking in nearly incompressible materials. Convergence analysis and the corresponding algorithms are provided for all cases. Extensive numerical experiments are presented to validate the effectiveness of the approaches.