Reviewing detected contact pairs

You should review the contact pair candidates in the contact pair candidates table to ensure the surfaces involved are accurate and sufficient for your modeling needs.

Click on each contact pair name with the Highlight in viewport option toggled on to see the locations of each potential surface interaction or tie. If necessary you can add, remove, or modify the contact pair candidates.

  1. Add a row to the table for any unidentified contact pairs you would like to include in your model:
    1. Click mouse button 3 anywhere in the contact pair candidates table, and select Add from the menu that appears. You can also click the button above the contact pair candidates table.
    2. Select a main surface in the viewport, and click OK in the prompt area.

      For details on surface selection, see Selecting objects within the viewport.

    3. Select a secondary surface in the viewport, and click OK.

      Abaqus/CAE adds a contact pair candidate row to the contact pair candidates table based on the surfaces you selected. Default values are provided for each column in the row.

  2. Remove any contact pair candidates that are not necessary for your modeling purposes. Click mouse button 3 anywhere on the row representing the contact pair candidate you want to remove, and select Delete from the menu that appears. You can also click the row you want to remove and then click the button above the contact pair candidates table.
  3. If multiple contact pairs will use identical parameters in their contact interaction or tie constraint definition, you can combine them into a single contact pair:
    1. In the contact pair candidates table, highlight the rows representing the contact pairs you want to combine (see Selecting multiple items from lists and tables, for instructions on selecting multiple rows in a table).
    2. Click mouse button 3 on any highlighted cell, and select Merge from the menu that appears. You can also click the button above the contact pair candidates table.

      Abaqus/CAE replaces the selected contact pairs with a single contact pair. The selected main surfaces are merged into a single surface, and the selected secondary surfaces are merged into a single surface. The merged contact pair uses the parameters from the selected contact pair that appeared highest in the contact pair candidates table.

    Note:

    When combining contact pairs, the resultant merged surfaces must meet the orientation and connectivity requirements discussed in About Contact Pairs in Abaqus/Standard and About Contact Pairs in Abaqus/Explicit.