A virtual-surface contact algorithm for the interaction between FE and spherical DE ?
The virtual-surface contact algorithm, which is based on insideoutside method and penalty function method, is developed. Innermost details regarding local search, contact force calculation and the algorithmic implementations are presented. In the proposed contact algorithm, the penetration between discrete element and finite element can be determined without solving nonlinear equations. The proposed contact algorithm has been implemented into in-house developed code. Four numerical examples are employed to validate the accuracy and robustness of the proposed contact algorithm.
contact penalty discrete element finite element virtual-surface algorithm