A new penalty stiffness treatment for master-slave contact surfaces

Finite element simulation of contact/impact problems using the penalty method is a well established capability. However, the way in which the penalty stiffness is obtained can lead to inappropriate distributions of contact pressure at edges or mesh transitions. A new method of defining the penalty stiffness is developed to consistently relate forces on contacting nodes with the contact pressure. This technique is applied to several examples to demonstrate its effectiveness in avoiding the stress edge effect and the accompanying numerical noise.