Time domain boundary elements for elastodynamic contact

This article proposes a boundary element method for the dynamic contact between a linearly elastic body and a rigid obstacle. The Signorini contact problem is formulated as a variational inequality for the Poincaré-Steklov operator for the elastodynamic equations on the boundary, which is solved in a mixed formulation using boundary elements in the time domain. We obtain an a priori estimate for the resulting Galerkin approximations. Numerical experiments confirm the stability and convergence of the proposed method for the contact problem in flat and curved two-dimensional geometries, as well as for moving obstacles.