On the efficiency of new and old strategies for solving contact problems

The most recent progresses in the field of numerical treatment of contact problems permit to obtain high efficiency with a close correlation to the microscopical characteristics of the contact surfaces. In this paper a modification of standard strategies to satisfy contact constraints is presented which yields a non-linear, smaooth change of contact stiffness around the solution. Thus the adopted approach leads to an iterative method which does not depict numerical instabilities within the solution search process. This fact permits to achieve a better convergence rate with respect to standard methods.