About general contact in Abaqus/Standard

Abaqus/Standard provides two algorithms for modeling contact and interaction problems: the general contact algorithm and the contact pair algorithm. See About contact interactions for a comparison of the two algorithms. This section describes how to include general contact in an Abaqus/Standard analysis, how to specify the regions of the model that may be involved in general contact interactions, and how to obtain output from a general contact analysis.

The general contact algorithm in Abaqus/Standard:

  • is specified as part of the model definition;

  • allows very simple definitions of contact with very few restrictions on the types of surfaces involved;

  • uses sophisticated tracking algorithms to ensure that proper contact conditions are enforced efficiently;

  • can be used simultaneously with the contact pair algorithm (i.e., some interactions can be modeled with the general contact algorithm, while others are modeled with the contact pair algorithm);

  • can be used with two- or three-dimensional surfaces; and

  • uses the finite-sliding, surface-to-surface contact formulation as the primary contact formulation, supplemented by the edge-to-surface, edge-to-edge, and vertex-to-surface contact formulations.

The following topics are discussed:

Related Topics
About contact interactions
In Other Guides
*CONTACT
*CONTACT INCLUSIONS
*CONTACT EXCLUSIONS
Defining general contact

ProductsAbaqus/StandardAbaqus/CAE