2010 Volume 2 Pages 1-4
The present paper describes a numerical solution to shape optimization problems of contacting elastic bodies for controlling contact pressure. The contacting elastic problem is formulated as the minimization of potential energy with a constraint for penetration based on the large deformation theory. The contact pressure is defined as a Lagrange multiplier for the constraint of penetration in the minimization problem. An error norm of the contact pressure to a desired distribution is chosen as an objective functional. The shape derivative of the functional is theoretically evaluated. Numerical solutions are constructed by the traction method.
