Phenomena occurring during a contact of two bodies are encountered in everyday life. In reality almost every type of motion is related to frictional contact between a moving body and a ground. Moreover, modeling of simple and more complex processes as nailing, cutting, vacuum pressing, movement of machines and their elements, rolling or, finally, a numerical simulation of car crash tests, requires taking contact into account.Therefore, its analysis has been a subject of many research efforts for a long time now. However, it is author 's opinion that there are relatively few efforts related to contact between structural elements, like beams, plates or shells. The purpose of this work is to fill this gap. It concerns the beam-to-beam contact as a specific case of the 3D solids contact. A numerical formulation of frictional contact for beams with two shapes of cross-section is derived. Further, a couple of effective methods for modeling of smooth curves representing beam axes are presented. A part of the book is also devoted to analyze some aspects of thermo-electro-mechanical coupling in contact of thermal and electric conductors. Analyses in every chapter are illustrated with numerical examples showing the performance of derived contact finite elements.

Recent Advances in Computational Mechanics contains selected papers presented at the jubilee 20th Conference on Computer Methods in Mechanics (CMM 2013), which took place from 27 to 31 August 2013 at the Poznan University of Technology. The first Polish Conference on Computer Methods in Mechanics was held in Poznan in 1973. This very successful meeting initiated a series of conferences organized every two years by different Polish universities. Over the years the series gained an increasingly international character. The common general objective of the CMM conferences is to provide a forum for presentation and discussion of new ideas referring to the theoretical background and practical applications of computational mechanics. The program of each conference reflects current extensive research in this field of science. This proceedings volume addresses various aspects of computational mechanics, including advanced analysis of structures, modelling of material properties, damage mechanics, contact mechanics, biomechanics, heat transfer and coupled problems. This book will be of interest to students, researchers and practitioners in the fields of structural mechanics, mechanical engineering, material technology and biomechanics.

Phenomena occurring during a contact of two bodies are encountered in everyday life. In reality almost every type of motion is related to frictional contact between a moving body and a ground. Moreover, modeling of simple and more complex processes as nailing, cutting, vacuum pressing, movement of machines and their elements, rolling or, finally, a numerical simulation of car crash tests, requires taking contact into account. Therefore, its analysis has been a subject of many research efforts for a long time now. However, it is author's opinion that there are relatively few efforts related to contact between structural elements, like beams, plates or shells. The purpose of this work is to fill this gap. It concerns the beam-to-beam contact as a specific case of the 3D solids contact. A numerical formulation of frictional contact for beams with two shapes of cross-section is derived. Further, a couple of effective methods for modeling of smooth curves representing beam axes are presented. A part of the book is also devoted to analyze some aspects of thermo-electro-mechanical coupling in contact of thermal and electric conductors. Analyses in every chapter are illustrated with numerical examples showing the performance of derived contact finite elements.