A single surface contact algorithm for the post-buckling analysis of shell structures

Abstract In some of our applications we are interested in how a structure behaves after it buckles. When a structure collapses completely, a single surface may buckle enough that it comes into contact with itself. The traditional approach of defining master and slave contact surfaces will not work because we do not know a priori how to partition the surface of the structure. This paper presents a contact algorithm that requires only a single surface definition for its input.