Automatic face pairing

Many simulation objects, such as contact and glue, require you to define pairs of surfaces. You can use the Create Automatic Face Pairs dialog box to determine all the face pairs in the model, or in a selected set of faces, whose distance is below a specified tolerance.

Understanding face pair grouping

When you create solution objects manually, you can specify source or target face sets containing multiple faces. Automatic face pairing enables you to specify grouping options that create solution objects based on face pair sets derived from your geometry. For example, the following part consists of four solid bodies, and Create Automatic Face Pairs has identified seven face pairs for defining surface-to-surface contact.

The software creates three face pairs between blocks A and C, one face pair between blocks C and D, and three face pairs between blocks D and B.

Depending on which grouping option you select, you can create one, three, or seven simulation objects, in this case, surface-to-surface contacts.

• If you select One, the software creates a single contact that contains all seven face pairs.

• If you select Per Body Pairs, the software creates three contacts: one contact containing a single face pair between C and D; one contact containing three face pairs between A and C, and one contact containing three face pairs between B and D.

• If you select Per Face Pair, the software creates seven contacts, one for each face pair.

For cyclic symmetric boundary coupling, the groupings divide the resulting regions according to the bodies or faces to which the source region belongs.

Updating automatic face pairs

Automatic face pairs require an update when:

• Faces in the master model have been modified.

• Bodies in the master model have been transformed.

• Bodies have been added or removed.

When you update the model, all automatically generated face pairs are deleted and regenerated. Manually created face pairs are unaffected. On update:

• If an automatically generated face pair has the same source and target face sets as an existing manually created face pair, the automatically generated face pair is not regenerated.

• If an automatically generated face pair shares a subset of the same surfaces as an existing manually created face pair, the automatically generated face pair is still regenerated. You may need to manually edit the face pair definitions to ensure a solvable model.

Where do I find it?

You can access the Create Automatic Face Pairs dialog box from the following dialog boxes:

• Surface-to-Surface Contact

• Surface-to-Surface Gluing

• Cyclic Symmetry (Simcenter 3D Multiphysics)

• Advanced Nonlinear Contact

• Surface-to-Surface Thermal Conductance

• Disjoint Fluid Mesh Pairing

• Virtual Thread Contact

Learn more

Surface-to-Surface Contact

Disjoint Fluid Mesh Pairing

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Automatic face pairing, Simcenter 3D 2021.1 Series

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