Defining General Contact

You can apply general contact for a fast and efficient method to specify contact behavior between many or all components in a model.

You can define only one general contact behavior in a simulation scenario.

The default general contact options apply to the majority of simulation cases. Therefore, in most cases, you only need to create the general contact feature.

See Also
About General Contact
  1. From the Connections section of the action bar, click General Contact .
    The app creates a default contact initialization feature and assigns it to the entire model.

    You can delete the default feature or the assignment, but you must then create a contact initialization to use in the general contact definition, as described in Defining Contact Initializations.

  2. Optional: Enter a descriptive Name.
  3. Optional: Assign contact initialization definitions to correct small gaps or overclosures for specific surface pairs.
    1. Expand the Contact initialization assignments section, and click Create initialization assignment.
    2. Select the surface supports for Surface 1 and Surface 2.

      Tip: You can use context toolbar to help you select supports. The supports can be either surfaces or beams, but one support cannot contain a mix of both element types.

      The app highlights the supports that you select. Surfaces that belong to the main support (Surface 1) appear green, while surfaces that you select that belong to the secondary support (Surface 2) appear magenta.

      You can click to display the parts that are associated with Surface 1 only. Similarly, you can click to display the parts that are associated with Surface 2 only.

    3. If the supports include shell geometry, verify that you have applied the contact interaction on the correct side of the surface.

      Tip: Click to change the side.

    4. From the Contact initialization options, select a contact initialization to associate with the surface pair.
    5. Click OK.

    The app ignores any assignments that you make to surface pairs that are not included in the general contact definition.

  4. Click OK.