Author(s)

E. Mitsopoulou, I. Doudoumis & N. Charalambakis

Abstract

A numerical method for the solution of the unilateral contact-impact problem of adjacent structures during earthquakes E. Mitsopoulou, I. Doudoumis, N. Charalambakis Thessaloniki, Greece ABSTRACT In the paper a method is presented for the numerical solution of the dynamic unilateral contact-impact problem between adjacent buildings during earth- quake motions. Two or three dimensional structures, discrete or discretized by the finite element method are solved using also a temporal discretiza- tion. For each time step an elimination technique of the internal degrees of freedom gives rise to a linear complementarity problem (L.Q.P.) on the boundary with respect to the unknown relative unilateral displacements of the time step under consideration. This problem is solved by Lemke's algo- rithm. The impact shocks and the velocities' changes due to them, when a pair of nodes gets into contact are also properly considered. At the end of the paper numerical examples are presen

Keywords