About General Contact

General contact automatically identifies all surfaces from different part bodies in your model that can contact each other during the simulation.

General contact greatly simplifies the process of defining contact throughout your model, especially for a complex model with many interacting parts that are displaced during the simulation. General contact further simplifies your simulation by making minor adjustments to the initial position of the components so that they are just touching and so that no residual strain is introduced before the simulation begins.



General contact identifies surfaces that can interact; however, it does not connect or bond those surfaces. You must use a connection such as a bolt or surface-based contact if you want to bond components together.

You can define only one general contact feature in a simulation.

When two components do come into contact, the surfaces cannot intersect and force is transmitted across their common surface. In some cases, only forces normal to the surfaces in contact are transmitted. However, if friction is present, a limited amount of tangential force is also transmitted.

 

See Also
Defining General Contact
Surface-based Contact and Bonded Contact