Numerics of Unilateral Contacts and Friction

Book excerpt: Mechanics provides the link between mathematics and practical engineering app- cations. It is one of the oldest sciences, and many famous scientists have left and will leave their mark in this fascinating ?eld of research. Perhaps one of the most prominentscientists in mechanics was Sir Isaac Newton, who with his “laws of - tion” initiated the description of mechanical systems by differential equations. And still today, more than 300 years after Newton, this mathematical concept is more actual than ever. The rising computer power and the development of numerical solvers for diff- ential equations allowed engineersall over the world to predict the behavior of their physical systems fast and easy in an numerical way. And the trend to computational simulation methods is still further increasing, not only in mechanics, but practically in all branches of science. Numerical simulation will probablynot solve the world’s engineering problems, but it will help for a better understanding of the mechanisms of our models.