Assigning Contact Properties for General Contact in Abaqus/Explicit

Contact properties:

  • define the mechanical surface interaction models that govern the behavior of surfaces when they are in contact; and

  • can be applied selectively to particular regions within a general contact domain.

This page discusses:

 

See Also
About General Contact in Abaqus/Explicit
About Mechanical Contact Properties
Contact Pressure-Overclosure Relationships
Contact Damping
Frictional Behavior
*CONTACT
*CONTACT PROPERTY ASSIGNMENT
*SURFACE INTERACTION

Assigning Contact Properties

The default contact property model in Abaqus/Explicit assumes “hard” contact in the normal direction, no friction, no thermal interactions, etc. You can assign a nondefault contact property definition (surface interaction) to specified regions of the general contact domain. These regions are identified with surface names or material names. For example, contact property ContProp_A can be assigned to the combination of surface Surf_1 and the surface whose underlying elements have a section assignment with material Rubber. Surfaces associated with Surf_1 and Rubber can span multiple parts.

Contact property assignments propagate through all analysis steps in which the general contact interaction is active.

The surface names used to specify the regions where nondefault contact properties should be assigned do not have to correspond to the surface names used to specify the general contact domain. In many cases the contact interaction will be defined for a large domain, while nondefault contact properties will be assigned to a subset of this domain. Any contact property assignments for regions that fall outside of the general contact domain will be ignored. The last assignment will take precedence if the specified regions overlap.

Example

The following contact property assignments are specified below for the first step in a general contact analysis:

  • a global assignment of contProp1 to the entire general contact domain;

  • a local assignment of contProp2 to self-contact for surf1;

  • a local assignment of the default Abaqus contact property to contact between surf2 and surf3; and

  • a local assignment of contProp3 to contact between the entire contact domain and surf4. 

SURFACE INTERACTION, NAME=contProp1
FRICTION
0.1
SURFACE INTERACTION, NAME=contProp2
FRICTION
0.15
SURFACE INTERACTION, NAME=contProp3
FRICTION
0.20
STEP
Step1
DYNAMIC, EXPLICIT
…
CONTACT
CONTACT INCLUSIONS, ALL EXTERIOR
CONTACT PROPERTY ASSIGNMENT
 , , contProp1 
surf1, surf1, contProp2 
surf2, surf3,
 , surf4, contProp3

Changing Contact Properties

Contact property models for general contact interactions are independent of the steps in which they are used and cannot be modified from step to step. To change the contact properties used in a given step, you must specify a new contact property assignment that refers to a different contact property model.

Example

For example, the following input could be used to change the friction coefficient used for contact between the entire general contact domain and surf4 in the second step of the analysis started in the previous example: 

STEP
Step2
DYNAMIC, EXPLICIT
…
CONTACT
CONTACT PROPERTY ASSIGNMENT
 , surf4, contProp2