Contact with Clearance (Abaqus)

When you are working with Abaqus as your solver, you can use the Contact with Clearance command to define precise clearance or overclosure (initial penetration) values for the nodes on the slave (target) surface in a contact pair. With Contact with Clearance, the initial clearance or overclosure value you specify overwrites the initial clearance or overclosure value that the software calculates at each slave node.

Clearance or overclosure value can be uniform or spatially varying

In the Contact with Clearance dialog box, you can use the Clearance Definition options to define the clearance or overclosure value as either uniform or spatially varying for the contact pair. You can use a table field to define the clearance or overclosure as spatially varying. For more information, see Fields.

Contact with clearance is supported only in small-sliding contact analyses

You can only use the Contact with Clearance command when you use the small-sliding contact formulation in your analysis. In Abaqus, you use the *CONTACT PAIR keyword to specify the contact formulation. In Pre/Post, you use a Contact Pair modeling object to specify the parameters for the *CONTACT PAIR keyword:

1. In the Contact Pair dialog box, select Small from the Sliding Type list to use the small-sliding formulation instead of the finite-sliding formulation.

2. In the Contact with Clearance dialog box, use the Contact Pair option to associate the Contact Pair modeling object with the simulation object.

Associated Abaqus keywords

When you export or solve your model, the software uses the options you specify in the Contact with Clearance dialog box to define the *CONTACT PAIR and *CLEARANCE keywords in your Abaqus input file. For more information, see Adjusting Initial Surface Positions and Specifying Initial Clearances in Abaqus/Standard Contact Pairs in the Abaqus Analysis User's Guide and *CLEARANCE and *CONTACT PAIR in the Abaqus Keywords Reference Guide.

Where do I find it?

Application	Pre/Post
Prerequisites	A Simulation file as the work part and the displayed partAbaqus as the specified solverStructural or Axisymmetric Structural as the analysis typeGeneral Analysis as the solution type
Command Finder	Contact with Clearance

Learn more

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Comparison of general contact and contact pair (Abaqus)

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Defining damage modeling for Abaqus cohesive behavior

Removing elements and contact pairs (Abaqus)

Automatic face pairing

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Contact with Clearance (Abaqus), Simcenter 3D 2021.1 Series

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