• Peter Wriggers, Institute or Continuum Mechanics, Leibniz University Hannover
• Michel Raous, Laboratoire de Mécanique et d'Acoustique, CNRS
• Giorgio Zavarise, Department of Structural, Geotechnical and Building Engineering - Politecnico di Torino
• Mike Puso, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

During the last decades considerable progress has been achieved in the area of Contact Mechanics and related computational aspects, many problems are still open. The research field is still growing and diversifies in many directions. Indeed, research in contact mechanics has different facets which are related to understanding of physical phenomena, computational methods as well as industrial applications.

Areas of interest have a broad range. A list of pertinent subjects includes among others: unilateral conditions, adhesion, friction, wear and rolling contact are treated within multi-scale, multi-physics and coupled multi-field formulations. Furthermore, contact at nanoscales, contact dynamics and biomechanical contact problems have to be mentioned.

Computational methods involve specific topics: discretization techniques, constraint enforcement methods, contact detection algorithms, discrete elements techniques, fast solvers for constraint problems.

The minisymposium will provide a wide forum for scientists and young researchers, which allows discussion of the most recent advances and the perspectives for future developments in computational contact mechanics.