What Are Eulerian Surfaces and Why Use Them?
An Eulerian surface represents the exterior surface of a particular Eulerian material instance in an Abaqus/Explicit analysis. Since Eulerian materials flow through the Eulerian mesh, their surfaces cannot be defined by a simple list of element faces. Instead, these surfaces often lie within Eulerian elements and must be computed in each time increment using element volume fraction data.
You can use Eulerian surfaces to define specific interactions with Lagrangian surfaces in Abaqus/Explicit's general contact algorithm. Once defined, you can reference Eulerian surfaces in inclusions, exclusions, and interaction definitions. You cannot combine or crop Eulerian surfaces.
Eulerian surface definitions are not required for the use of Eulerian-Lagrangian contact. If you specify automatic contact for the entire model, the exterior surface of all Eulerian materials will automatically be considered for contact.
Advantages of Creating Eulerian Surfaces
You can use Eulerian surfaces to:
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Assign contact properties for contact interactions involving a particular Eulerian material instance.
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Exclude interactions between Eulerian materials and Lagrangian bodies that are unlikely to make contact, simplifying the contact problem and reducing computational cost.