An isogeometric frictionless beam‐to‐beam contact formulation for hyperelastic Cosserat rods with unconstrained directors

Abstract

AbstractWe present an isogeometric finite element formulation of frictionless beam‐to‐beam contact, using a Cosserat beam formulation with unconstrained directors. The beam's cross‐sectional deformation can be efficiently represented by director vectors. For the first order beam kinematics, Poisson locking due to the inability to represent linear in‐plane strain field in the cross‐section is alleviated by an enhanced assumed strain (EAS) method [1]. We employ a Gauss point‐to‐surface contact formulation combined with an active set iteration and a penalty method. The beam's cross‐sectional boundary as well as the axis is parameterized by a NURBS (non‐uniform rational B‐spline) curve, so that the lateral boundary surface has at least C2‐continuity, which yields a continuous surface metric and curvature in the closest point projection [2]. Since we do not employ zero stress conditions, a three‐dimensional nonlinear constitutive law can be straightforwardly utilized. We present several numerical examples, where a compressible Neo‐Hookean material is particularly considered.