Dynamic simulation of frictional contacts of thin beams during large overall motions via absolute nodal coordinate formulation

The aim of this study is to develop an approach of simulating the frictional contact dynamics of thin beams with large deformations and continuous contact zones of large size during their large overall motions. For this purpose, the thin beams are meshed via initially straight and gradient deficient thin beam elements of the absolute nodal coordinate formulation (ANCF) degenerated from a curved beam element of ANCF. A detection strategy for contact zone is proposed based on the combination of the minimal distance criterion and master-slave approach. By making use of the minimal distance criterion, the closest points of two thin beams can be found efficiently. The master-slave approach is employed to determine the continuous contact zone. The generalized frictional contact forces and their Jacobians are derived based on the principle of virtual work. Gauss integration is used to integrate the contact forces over the continuous contact zone. The generalized-alpha method is used to solve the dynamic equations of contacting beams. Numerical simulations of four static and dynamic contact problems, including those with continuous contact zones of large size, are completed to validate the high performance of the approach.