In this article, we propose a C0 interior penalty
(
C
0
I
P
)
method for the frictional plate contact problem and derive both a priori and a posteriori error estimates. We derive an abstract error estimate in the energy norm without additional regularity assumption on the exact solution. The a priori error estimate is of optimal order whenever the solution is regular. Further, we derive a reliable and efficient a posteriori error estimator. Numerical experiments are presented to illustrate the theoretical results. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 32: 36–59, 2016