Numerical Methods for Strong Nonlinearities in Mechanics: Contact and Fracture

Numerical Methods for Strong Nonlinearities in Mechanics deals with recent advances in the numerical treatment of contact/friction and damage phenomena. Although physically distinct, these phenomena both lead to a strong nonlinearity in the mechanical problem, therefore limiting the regularity of the problem, which is now non-differentiable.

This has two direct consequences: on the one hand, the mathematical characteristics of the problem deviate from wellestablished forms, requiring innovative discretization schemes; on the other hand, the low regularity makes it particularly difficult to solve the corresponding large-scale algebraic systems robustly and efficiently. In addition, neither the uniqueness, nor the existence of solutions, remain assured, resulting in bifurcation points, limit loads and structural instabilities, which are always tricky to overcome numerically.

Jacques Besson is Research Director at the CNRS, France, where he conducts research into damage and fracture modeling of metallic materials.

Frédéric Lebon is Professor of Solid Mechanics at Aix-Marseille University and the Mechanics and Acoustics Laboratory (LMA), France.

Eric Lorentz is a senior expert at EDF R&D, France, where he conducts studies on damage modeling, applied to the performance of power generation structures.