The book consists of two main parts: the first part contains the theoretical basis for the computational contact mechanics, and the second part contains the practical implementation of algorithms. All numerical examples from the second part are available online from the publisher’s web site.
The geometrically exact theory of contact interaction is based on building the proper coordinate system to describe the contact interaction in all its geometrically detail. A variety of methods to enforce contact conditions are presented for 1D, 2D and 3D systems. The FE discretization is then applied and numerical methods are presented. The contact elements are derived for a few situations: node-to-node, node-to-segment, segment-to-segment, and segment-to-analytical segment.
The code snippets in the second part have been designed for the FEAP using FORTRAN, but they are presented in a block-programming way, which allows the implementation in any language such as C++ or Matlab.
The book explains many algorithms used in well-known FEM packages in a simple manner and learns their FEM implementation. The prerequisite knowledge of continuum mechanics and numerical methods has been kept to a minimum. This reviewer would recommend the book to undergraduate, graduate and Ph.D.students interested in computational contact mechanics.