Fixed stress splitting approach for contact problems in a porous medium

Abstract

We consider a poromechanics model including frictionless contact mechanics. The resulting model consists of the Biot equations with contact boundary conditions leading to a variational inequality modelling mechanical deformations coupled to a linear parabolic flow equation. We propose a fully discrete iterative scheme for solving this model. This scheme decoupled the flow and mechanics equations and extends the fixed-stress splitting scheme for the Biot equations. We use finite elements in space and a backward Euler discretization in time. We show that the fixed stress split scheme is a contraction.