Application Chapter 2:

Contact Basics

Contact Non-linearities

Master’s
Master’s DegreeDegree
ininNumerical
Numerical Simulation in Engineering
Simulation with Ansys with Ansys
in Engineering
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1Universidad Politécnica de Madrid - Ansys 9th EDITION
 Contents

1. Basic Concepts 3
2. Auto Contact Detection 16
3. Contact Tool 28

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 Contents

1. Basic Concepts
2. Auto Contact Detection
3. Contact Tool

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 1. Basic Concepts
• When two separate surfaces touch each other such that they become mutually tangent, they are
said to be in contact.
• In the common physical sense, surfaces that are in contact have these characteristics:
• They do not interpenetrate.
• They can transmit compressive normal forces and tangential friction forces.
• They often do not transmit tensile normal forces. Surfaces are free to separate and move away from each other.
• Contact technology use the concept of a contact pair, which is composed of a target surface and
a contact surface.
• The contact elements overlie the underlying finite element model like a skin.
• Separate element types define the target and contact surfaces

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1. Basic Concepts
 Non Linear contacts
• Contact is a changing-status nonlinearity. That is, the stiffness of the system depends on the
contact status:

Status(0,1) = Open Status (2) = Closed and Status (3) = Closed and
Where 0 = Open, Far Field Sliding Sticking
1 = Open, Near Field

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1. Basic Concepts
 Non Linear contacts
• Contact is a strong nonlinearity, because both the normal and tangential stiffness at contact
surfaces change significantly with changing contact status.
• Large, sudden changes in stiffness often cause severe convergence difficulties.

Open Closed
contact contact
F

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1. Basic Concepts
 Non Linear contacts
• Other factors that make contact analysis complicated include:
• You generally do not know the regions of contact until you've run the problem. Depending on the
loads, material, boundary conditions, and other factors, surfaces can come into and go out of contact
with each other in a largely unpredictable and abrupt manner.
• Many contact problems include friction.
• Friction is a path-dependent (energy-dissipating) phenomenon that requires an accurate load history, with
small time steps.
• Frictional response can be chaotic, making solution convergence difficult.
• Parts might be unconstrained except for contact with other parts.
• Prior to establishment of contact, such parts are initially unconstrained free bodies, with zero overall stiffness.
• In a static analysis, unconstrained free bodies are mathematically unstable. The solution “blows up.”
• In addition to these two difficulties, many contact problems must also address multi-field effects,
such as the conductance of heat, electrical currents, and magnetic flux in the areas of contact.

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1. Basic Concepts
 Connection Technology Library
• Mechanical offers a rich library of Connection Technology Options to simulate many different
behaviors between faces and edges of solid and surface bodies (meshed with shell elements).

Solid Face to Solid Face Surface Body Face to Surface body (or Surface Body Edge to Surface Body (or Solid)
Solid body ) Face Face

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1. Basic Concepts
 Stiffness behavior
Mechanical supports contact relationships with rigid bodies.
• Rigid to Rigid
• Rigid to Flexible (rigid must be the target side)
• Useful for improved efficiency when certain ‘rigid’ bodies in
the model are considerably stiffer than other ‘flexible’ bodies

Contact between
two rigid bodies

Contact between one

rigid and one flex body

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 Contact Pair Identification
• One side of a contact pair is referred to as a contact surface, the other side is referred to as a
target surface.
• Contact and target scoping does not need to be equal. For example, a contact can be scoped to 2 faces while
its target is scoped to 5 faces.
• Contact pairs are color coded in the details and on the geometry.

2D Contact Pair

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1. Basic Concepts
 Color codes
• When a contact region is highlighted in the connections branch, parts are made translucent for
easier viewing.
• Contact surfaces are color coded for easy identification.

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1. Basic Concepts
 Body views
For ease of viewing or selecting, “Body Views” can be activated:
• Separate windows display the full model, contact body and target body.
• Views can be “synched” (all windows move together).
• Selecting (for contact scoping) can be done in any window.

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1. Basic Concepts
 Random Colors

To improve the readibility

of models, filters based on
name are available as well
as unique random colors
for the display of
numerous loads, boundary
conditions or named
selections.

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1. Basic Concepts
 “Go To” RMB Menu
“Go To” utilities provide a simple way of verifying contact definitions:
• Bodies without contact
• Parts without contact
• Contact regions for selected bodies
• Contacts common to selected bodies
• Corresponding bodies in tree
Contacts can be quickly renamed to match part names

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1. Basic Concepts
 Manual Contact definition
• Where surfaces are not automatically detected a manual contact pair can be defined.
• Insert a manual contact region and select the “contact” and “target” surfaces.

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1. Basic Concepts
 Contents

1. Basic Concepts
2. Auto Contact Detection
3. Contact Tool

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 2. Auto Contact Detection
• By default, when an assembly is imported or updated from a CAD system, contact is automatically
detected and contact regions are assigned for face/face conditions.

• The switch to activate auto detection can be controlled by highlighting “Connections” branch in
the Project tree for auto detection upon model refreshing :

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2. Auto Contact Detection
 Checking Contacts
• The details for surface contact contain controls for assigning contact to the top or bottom of a
shell. Contact and target shell faces must face each other.
• Including the thickness effect here means the gap will be ignored and the surfaces will behave as
if they were in contact. Top

Bottom

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 Auto Contact Detection Options
• The auto detection parameters can be controlled globally (from Tools Options Dialogue Box) or
locally (from the details windows associated with individual contact folders).

Global control of all connections Local control of grouped connections

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2. Auto Contact Detection
 Auto Contact Detection Tolerance
• Although the default settings are sufficient for most contact problems, these additional controls
broaden the range of capabilities
Tolerance Type, Tolerance Value, and Tolerance
Slider: Bodies in an assembly that were created in
a CAD system may not have been placed precisely,
resulting in small overlaps or gaps along the
contact regions between bodies. You can account
for any imprecision by specifying contact
detection tolerance (applicable to automatic
contact detection only).

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2. Auto Contact Detection
 Tolerance Slider Vs Tolerance Value
• To tighten the contact detection between bodies, move the Tolerance Slider bar closer to +100. To
loosen the contact detection, move the Tolerance Slider bar closer to -100.
• A tighter tolerance means that the bodies have to be within a smaller region (of either gap or overlap)
to be considered in contact; a loose tolerance will have the opposite effect.
• Contact detection tolerance can also be adjusted using an exact distance by changing the
Tolerance Type to Value and entering a specific distance in the Tolerance Value field.
• A circle appears around the current cursor location as shown here.

Graphical Illustration
of user defined
tolerance value for Existing gap
contact detection between CAD
parts

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2. Auto Contact Detection
 Contact Detection Types
• Types of Contact Detection available between solid and surface bodies:
• Face/Face: contact between faces of different bodies
• Face/Edge: contact between faces and edges of different bodies
• Edge/Edge: contact between edges of different bodies

• Face/Edge and Edge/Edge contact only applies to solid and surface bodies.
• Contact relationships involving line bodies are not supported.

• For Face/Edge detection, faces are always designated as targets and edges are always designated
as contacts.
• You can select any combination of contacts to be detected during “Create Automatic Connections”. You
can also set default preferences for these contact filter options.

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 Face/Edge Detection

By default: no contact detection Face/Edge: Yes

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2. Auto Contact Detection
 Edge/Edge Detection
By default: no contact detection Face/Edge: Yes

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2. Auto Contact Detection
 Priority
For very large models the number of contact regions can sometimes become overwhelming and redundant,
especially when multiple types of contact are allowed.

• 209 parts
• 450 symmetric contact pairs
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2. Auto Contact Detection
 Priority
• Face Overrides gives Face/Face contact precedence over both
Face/Edge and Edge/Edge contact. Face Overrides also gives
Face/Edge contact precedence over Edge/Edge contact.
• In general, when Face Overrides priority is set with Face/Edge and
Edge/Edge contact, no Edge/Edge contact pairs will be detected.

• Edge Overrides gives Edge/Edge contact precedence over both

Face/Edge and Face/Face contact. Edge Overrides also gives
Face/Edge contact precedence over Face/Face contact.
• In general, when Edge Overrides priority is set with Face/Edge and
Face/Face contact, no Face/Face contact pairs will be detected.

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 Group By
• Setting “Group By” equal to “Bodies” (default) or to “Parts”
means that contact faces and edges that lie on the same
bodies or same parts will be grouped into a single region.
• Automatically generated pairs may have multiple selections on the
source side, or on the target side, or on both sides. Using one of
these options can minimize the number of contact regions created.
• Any regions generated will have only one entity scoped to its source
and target (that is, one face or one edge).
• Choosing None avoids excessive contact search times in the Ansys
solver if there are a large number of source/target faces in a single
region.

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2. Auto Contact Detection
 Search Across
• It enables automatic contact detection through the following
options:
• Bodies (default): Only between bodies.
• Parts: Only between bodies of different parts, that is, not between
bodies within the same multibody part.
• For a body within a multibody part that does not touch another body,
you must manually insert a Connections object to connect the bodies.

• Anywhere: Detects any self-contact.

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2. Auto Contact Detection
 Contents

1. Basic Concepts
2. Auto Contact Detection
3. Contact Tool

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 3. Contact Tool
• The Contact Tool is an object that allows you to examine assembly contact:
• Before loading to verify initial Information (Status, gap, penetration, pinball,..etc)
• Insert under a Connections branch

• As part of the final solution to verify final information and the transfer of loads (forces and moments)
across the various contact regions.
• Insert under a Solution branch object

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3. Contact Tool
 Initial Information
• Initial contact information can be scoped to evaluate all regions or specific regions of interest on
both contact and/or target sides.

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3. Contact Tool
 Initial Information
• Information such as status, number of elements contacting, penetration, pinball, etc… for each
region can be very useful for verification and troubleshooting

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3. Contact Tool
 Initial Information
• Geometric Gap and Geometric Penetration are the physical gap and penetration that exists at a
contact region between solid bodies
• Gap and Penetration are derived values resulting from Add Offset adjustments or between
surface bodies

• The N/A designation appears in the following locations and situations:

• All result columns when the contact pair is inactive (row is gray, or Inactive appears under the Status column).
• The Geometric Gap column for Frictionless, Rough, or Frictional contact Types and an Interface Treatment set to
Add Offset.

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3. Contact Tool
 Result Information
• Contact results can be scoped to evaluate all regions or specific regions of interest on both
contact and/or target sides.
• In the Details view, select Worksheet in the Scoping Method field. The Worksheet appears.
Scoped contact regions are those that are checked in the table.

• Add more contact results as needed in the Contact Tool folder (Contact> [Contact Result, for
example, Pressure] from the Contact Tool context toolbar, or right mouse button click on Contact
Tool, then Insert> [Contact Result, for example, Pressure]).
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3. Contact Tool
 Result Information

Status
Contact
Pressure

Penetration Gap

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3. Contact Tool
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