Defining Surface-Based Contact in Thermal Steps

You can apply surface-based contact to define the interaction behavior between two discrete surface regions in the model.

See Also
About Surface-Based Contact
In Other Guides
About Step-dependent Actions
  1. From the Interactions section of the action bar, click Surface-based Contact .
  2. Optional: Enter a descriptive Name.
  3. Select Let system determine main/secondary assignment to allow the app to specify the main surface and secondary surface assignments automatically.
    The dialog box indicates the two faces as Surface 1 and Surface 2 and disables the swap option.
  4. Select the geometry supports in the model.

    You must apply surface-based contact must be applied between one or more faces or analytical rigid surfaces as the Main support and one or more faces as the Secondary support.

    Tip: When the contacting surfaces are difficult to discern, you can render all surfaces translucent except for those surfaces that contact each other.
    • Click green to render all surfaces translucent except for the main surfaces.
    • Click magenta to render all parts translucent except for the secondary surfaces.

  5. Optional: If the geometry supports include surface (shell) geometry, click to change the side of the surface to be considered in the contact interaction.
  6. Optional: If necessary, click to swap the Main and Secondary supports.
  7. From the Contact property options, select the name of a predefined contact property to be associated with this surface contact feature.

    If you do not choose a specific property, the app applies a default penalty contact. The default penalty contact provides a basic type of contact in which the penalty stiffness is constant, so the pressure-overclosure relationship is linear. The penalty stiffness is set to 10 times a representative underlying element stiffness.

    Note: The default penalty contact is different from having no contact property selected at all.

  8. Click OK.