Contact treatment in isogeometric analysis with NURBS

We study NURBS-based isogeometric analysis of contact problems and compare with standard C0-continuous Lagrange finite elements. A knot-to-surface (KTS) algorithm is developed to treat the contact constraints with NURBS contact surface discretizations. Qualitative studies deliver satisfactory results for various finite deformation frictionless thermoelastic contact problems. Quantitative studies based on the Hertz problem suggest the need for a...