Static Frictional Contact of the Space Shuttle Nose‐Gear Tire

Abstract A computational procedure has been presented for the solution of frictional contact problems for aircraft tires. The Space Shuttle nose‐gear tire was modeled using a two‐dimensional laminated anisotropic shell theory with the effects of variation in material and geometric parameters, transverse shear deformation, and geometric non‐linearities included. Contact conditions were incorporated into the formulation by using a perturbed Lagrangian approach with the fundamental unknowns consisting of the stress resultants, the generalized displacements, and the Lagrange multipliers associated with the contact and friction conditions. The contact friction algorithm was based on a modified Coulomb friction law. Elemental arrays were obtained by using a modified two‐field, mixed variational principle that was obtained by augmenting the functional of the variational principle by two terms: the Lagrange multiplier vector associated with nodal normal and tangential contact load intensities and a regularization...