An adaptive meshless element-free Galerkin-finite element (EFG-FE) coupling model for
thermal elasto-plastic contact problems is developed to investigate the influences of the steady-state
frictional heating on the contact performance of two contacting bodies. The thermal elasto-plastic
contact problems using the initial stiffness method is presented. The local adaptive refinement
strategy and the strain energy gradient-based error estimation for EFG-FE coupling method are
combined. The adaptive meshless model takes into account the temperature variation, micro plastic
flow, and the coupled thermo-elasto-plastic behavior of the materials, considering the
strain-hardening property of the materials and temperature-dependent yield strength. The adaptive
model is verified through the contact analysis of a cylinder with an elasto-plastic plane. The thermal
effects on the contact pressure, stresses distributions with certain frictional heat inputs are studied.
The results show that the accuracy of the solutions from the adaptive refinement model is satisfactory
but the cost of the CPU time is much less than that for the uniform refinement calculation.