A FEM–BEM coupling method for a nonlinear transmission problem modelling Coulomb friction contact Original Research Article

A nonlinear transmission problem modelling elastoplastic interface problems with contact and Coulomb friction is reduced to a boundary/domain variational inequality. We present a corresponding FEM/BEM coupling procedure and derive for its Galerkin solution an a priori error estimate. Furthermore we reformulate the problem as an equivalent saddle point problem whose discretization can be solved by the Uzawa algorithm. Convergence of the FEM/BEM coupling method is proved and numerical results are given.