The Boundary Element (BE) method is applied to rigid body contact problems. A brief overview of the BE contact formulation is presented, with modifications to incorporate rigid body contact problems. Three examples of rigid body contact involving rigid cylinders and rigid inclusions are presented to verify the accuracy of the BE formulation.

This paper presents a quadratic boundary element (BE) formulation for contact problems under normal and tangential loading using a local axes system to couple the contact variables. A brief review of the BE formulation is presented with emphasis on the coupling of contact variables to satisfy equilibrium and compatibility conditions. Four contact examples are shown to demonstrate the accuracy of the alternative BE formulation.

In this paper, a local coordinate axes system is used to describe the contact conditions instead of the usual global Cartesian system used in most BE formulations. To demonstrate the accuracy of the algoritms, three contact examples covering stationary, receding and advancing contact are presented.