A robust mixed finite element formulation for third medium contact

Third medium contact provides a smooth continuum alternative to classical contact algorithms by replacing explicit contact constraints with a highly compliant fictitious medium.

In this work, an auxiliary-field stabilization is introduced in which a deformation-gradient-like field is treated as an independent unknown in the third medium and coupled to the physical deformation gradient by a penalty term.

A gradient contribution acting on the auxiliary field provides the regularization mechanism without requiring a direct evaluation of higher displacement derivatives.

Linear and quadratic interpolation spaces are investigated, including continuous and element-wise discontinuous auxiliary-field approximations.

The numerical results show that continuous low-order auxiliary fields provide an effective gradient-type stabilization of the third medium, even when the displacement field is approximated by first-order finite elements.

For element-wise discontinuous auxiliary fields, the additional unknowns remain local to each element and can be eliminated locally by static condensation, so that the global system does not necessarily contain additional auxiliary degrees of freedom.

Benchmark problems involving large deformation, progressive self-contact and severe third-medium compression are used to assess the formulation.