2d Contact

[Anonymous]

What tools are available for 2d contact simulation?  All that I can find is Contact Elements and General Contact Elements. 

Is there any way to simulate contact between shells that are in the same plane as each other as I show below?  What about with friction?  What about with sliding?

[John_Holtz]

Hi,

You should use the "nonlinear > MES" analysis type. You can then define surface-to-surface contact between the parts. Just select one surface on top part and one surface on the bottom part, right-click, and choose Surface Contact. This will create a contact pair in the "Contact (Default: ___)" branch of the browser. [Optionally, you could pick the two parts instead of the individual surfaces. This will create many more contact elements, but the software has some intelligence to use only the ones close to contact.]

Once a contact pair is created, right-click on it in the browser and choose "Settings". This is where you choose between frictionless and friction contact.

P.S. I suggest that you refine the mesh around the area of contact. Otherwise, you may end up with only 1 or 2 nodes making contact with the adjacent surface -- depending on the defaults you or the software choose. It would be better to have more nodes in contact.

[Anonymous]

I do appreciate the time you took reply.  However, contact between parts and contact between surfaces does not seem to work for in plane shells and 2d elements in MES nonlinear.  Figure 1 is response I get when trying to set the contact between the two parts, "Automatic contact generation did not create any new contact pairs."  When I try contact for the two surfaces as in figure 2, it allows the contact pair but the contact does not work as you can see in Figure 3.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

[zhuangs]

If you follow the attached figure to define the contact pair, it will work for the 2D model.  Note that for 2D modl, the contact surface should only consist of lines on the sides of the model.

-Shoubing