A Systematic Review of Isogeometric Contact Analysis and Its Applications

The interaction across the contact interfaces has a wide range of applications in many engineering and industrial processes. The development of computational methods for simulating these processes is one of the major challenges of computational contact mechanics. To this end, the isogeometric analysis technique has gained significant popularity over the conventional finite element method due to its several advantageous features. This review mainly concentrates on the various isogeometric contact algorithms and their applications that serve to evaluate contact interfaces. First, a brief overview of the isogeometric analysis framework is provided, followed by its mathematical implementation in contact mechanics. Then, the available isogeometric contact algorithms are examined. This is followed by different practical applications of isogeometric contact analysis. Finally, the paper is concluded, setting the possibilities for future research needs in the current state of the art.