A Symmetric Algorithm for Solving Mechanical Contact Problems Using FreeFEM

This paper presents an algorithm to solve mechanical contact problems between two bodies or more, for linear elastic and finite deformation problems. The contact problem is considered as a minimization problem of an energy. The interior point method is used to solve the minimization problem. This algorithm is symmetric and the user no longer needs to specify a slave body and a master one. The algorithm was developed using FreeFEM and IPOPT software.