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Contact Problems

The software supports contact conditions for static, nonlinear, dynamic, drop test, and thermal studies of assemblies and multibodies. For static and nonlinear studies, you can consider the effect of friction between the contacting faces.

A Connections icon appears in the Simulation study tree of such studies. The options Contact Sets and Component Contact refer to options related to contact. For thermal studies, you can simulate thermal contact resistance.

Studies with contact conditions take longer solution times than similar problems without contact conditions. An additional time is needed if the large displacement flag is activated in the properties of a static study since the load is gradually increased.

Static studies can be used to solve contact problems only if no other nonlinearities are present. Otherwise, you must create nonlinear studies. You can drag contact definitions from static studies to nonlinear studies and vice versa. Make sure that these contact definitions are available to both study types.

By default, the software assumes that assembly components are bonded at their contacting boundaries. The user interface provides global, component, and local options to define contact conditions. Global settings apply where no component or local settings are defined. See here for automatic bonding between touching entities. Component settings apply unless local settings are specified.

The local surface (face-to-face) contact condition allows you to simulate thermal contact resistance for thermal studies. A shrink fit contact condition is provided to simulate shrink fit problems.

Contact conditions are represented by the mesh. A change in contact conditions requires remeshing the model.

For more information, refer to the Meshing section.



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