Comparison of general contact and contact pair (Abaqus)

In the Abaqus environment, two commands are available for modeling contact and interaction problems: General Contact and Contact Pair. A contact pair requires you to define the surfaces that can potentially come into contact using the Surface-to-Surface Contact and Contact with Clearance simulation objects. General contact, in comparison, provides a simple interface for specifying an all-inclusive self-contact, and the software automatically defines an all-inclusive surface to prescribe the contact domain.

• In Structural and Coupled Thermal-Structural solution types, a general contact provides capabilities to model surface-to-surface contact, edge-to-surface contact, and edge-to-edge contact. Surface-to-surface contact is the primary formulation and you can use the edge-to-surface and edge-to-edge formulations as supplementary formulations. You can also use the edge-to-surface contact formulation to model contact between segments of beam or truss elements and faceted surfaces. In addition, the edge-to-edge contact formulation also supports contact between segments of beam or truss elements. Self-contact in a general contact is not restricted to contact of a body with itself because surfaces in a general contact can include many separate bodies. For example, self-contact of a surface that includes two bodies includes contact between the bodies and contact of each body with itself.

• In Dynamic Explicit and Dynamic Coupled Thermal-Structural solution types, a general contact automatically includes all element-based surface facets, as well as all analytical rigid surfaces and surfaces on all Eulerian materials. A general contact generates contact forces to resist node-into-face, node-into-analytical rigid surface, and edge-into-edge contact penetrations. The primary mechanism for enforcing contact is node-to-face contact (the only mechanism a contact pair uses). A general contact also considers edge-to-edge contact, which is effective in enforcing contact that cannot be detected as penetrations of nodes into faces. For example, contact between beam segments and shell perimeter edges is usually only detected using an edge-to-edge contact. A general contact can be computationally expensive. Therefore, a trade-off between ease of defining the contact and analysis performance often exists. Although a general contact is more powerful and allows for simpler contact definitions, use a contact pair where you require more specialized contact features (for example debonding, cohesive contact behavior, and breakable bonds, such as spot welds).

Learn more

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