Asynchronous Variational Integration of Structural Collision Dynamics: Numerical Methods in Structural Mechanics

The growing power of modern workstations enables engineers to simulate more and more complex mechanical models by computers. In particular, nonlinear problems from structural dynamics are computationally intensive. Hence, there is ongoing demand for improvement of existing algorithms. This PhD thesis deals with the simulation of the dynamics of flexible bodies subject to constitutive and geometrical nonlinearities, as well as discontinuous phenomena arising from collisions. Procedures covered by this book are: Hamilton's principle, properties of variational mechanics, explicit variational integrators, treatment of holonomic and unilateral constraints, finite elements with continuous assumed gradients, asynchronous integration, variable time steps, collision detection and asynchronous contact with friction.