Specifying surface property assignments for general contact

Attributes for a general contact interaction, such as surface properties, are specified independently of the contact domain in the Attribute Assignments portion of the interaction editor. For a brief overview of general contact, see Understanding interactions. For a more detailed discussion, see Surface Properties for General Contact in Abaqus/Standard, and Assigning Surface Properties for General Contact in Abaqus/Explicit.

You can specify the following surface properties in a general contact interaction:

  • Surface thickness assignments. Assign nondefault surface thicknesses to shell or membrane surfaces.

  • Shell/Membrane offset assignments. Assign the surface offset to define the distance (as a fraction of the surface thickness) from the midsurface to the reference surface.

  • Surface smoothing assignments. Assign nondefault contact smoothing to model surfaces. Contact smoothing improves the contact stress and pressure accuracy for curved surfaces (see Smoothing Contact Surfaces in Abaqus/Standard).

  • Feature edge criteria assignments. Control the feature edges to be included in the general contact domain. Feature edges of a model include shell perimeter edges and geometric feature edges. Modeling of edge-to-edge contact is not allowed for Abaqus/Standard analyses.

  • Crush Trigger assignments. Control the crushing behaviors relating to CZone methodology in the general contact domain. CZone is an Abaqus/Explicit capability that integrates material, element, and contact modeling aspects to simulate crushing of laminated composites due to contact with other bodies (see CZone Analysis). Modeling of crush trigger contact is not allowed for Abaqus/Standard analyses.

  • Surface friction assignments. Establish friction coefficients as mathematical combinations of coefficients specified as surface properties. Modeling of friction contact is not allowed for Abaqus/Standard analyses.

  • Surface beam smoothing assignments. Assign nondefault beam smoothing to model surfaces.

  • Surface vertex criteria assignments. Control the vertex-to-surface contact formulation in the general contact domain. Vertex criteria of a model specify the vertex nodes that should be considered by the vertex-to-surface formulation (see Vertex Nodes).

This task shows you how to:

See Also
Interaction editors
Defining general contact
In Other Guides
Surface Properties for General Contact in Abaqus/Standard
Assigning Surface Properties for General Contact in Abaqus/Explicit