Including surfaces in general contacts (Abaqus)

When you define a General Contact simulation object for an Abaqus structural analysis, you can let the software calculate the surfaces for contact, or you can specify the regions of the model that should be considered for contact. For example, you can specify the individual contact surface pairing or specify self-contact for a selected surface. You can include multiple surface pairings.

Types of contacts

Five types of contacts are available in the General Contact dialog box when you create a General Contact simulation object:

All-Inclusive Self Contact

The simplest way to define a general contact is to create one that includes all allowable element faces and model entities, called an all-inclusive self-contact. The general contact algorithm uses tracking algorithms to ensure that proper contact conditions are enforced efficiently.

Automatic Pairing

To have the software automatically determine the contact surfaces, you can use the Create Automatic Face Pairs dialog box to specify the criteria the software uses to search for surfaces. For more information, see Automatic face pairing.

Surface Pair Contact Inclusion

You specify the individual contact surface pairings. One surface in each pair must be an element-based surface or an analytical rigid surface.

Self-Contact Surface Inclusion

You define self-contact for the selected surface.

Surface to Default All-Inclusive Surface Contact

You can specify that contact should be enforced between the default all-inclusive, automatically generated surface and the selected surface, including self-contact in any overlapping regions.

Associated Abaqus keywords

The options in the Contact Inclusion dialog box correspond to parameters for the Abaqus *CONTACT EXCLUSIONS and *SURFACE keywords.

For more information, see the Abaqus Keywords Reference Guide and the following topics in the Abaqus Analysis User's Guide:

• Defining general contact interactions in Abaqus/Standard

• Defining general contact interactions in Abaqus/Explicit

How do I

Define a general contact (Abaqus)

Define contact properties within a general contact (Abaqus)

Define contact exclusions (Abaqus)

Assign contact properties to surfaces (Abaqus)

Learn more

General Contact (Abaqus)

Defining contact properties for general contacts (Abaqus)

Excluding surfaces from general contacts (Abaqus)

Automatic face pairing

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Examples of defining general contact interactions (Abaqus)

Including surfaces in general contacts (Abaqus), Simcenter 3D 2021.1 Series

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