5 Contact Laws

Contact laws are equations that describe what happens at the contact interface when two solids in the considered system touch. They are special boundary conditions that are added in addition to the standard ones (displacements and/or stresses constraints), and which are essential when trying to solve a contact problem. Contact laws are studied in tribology, which is namely the science that studies the interactions between solids and which provides a wide variety of more or less complex contact models, which may take into account adhesion, lubrication, friction and wear. An interested reader can find detailed descriptions of the different contact models and laws in [41] and [119].