Contact pressure-overclosure relationships

In Abaqus the following contact pressure-overclosure relationships can be used to define the contact model:

  • the “hard” contact relationship minimizes the penetration of the slave surface into the master surface at the constraint locations and does not allow the transfer of tensile stress across the interface;

  • a “softened” contact relationship in which the contact pressure is a linear function of the clearance between the surfaces;

  • a “softened” contact relationship in which the contact pressure is an exponential function of the clearance between the surfaces (in Abaqus/Explicit this relationship is available only for the contact pair algorithm);

  • a “softened” contact relationship in which a tabular pressure-overclosure curve is constructed by progressively scaling the default penalty stiffness (available only for general contact in Abaqus/Explicit);

  • a “softened” contact relationship in which the contact pressure is a piecewise linear (tabular) function of the clearance between the surfaces; and

  • a relationship in which there is no separation of the surfaces once they contact.

In addition, a viscous damping relationship can be defined that will affect the pressure-overclosure relationship; see Contact damping for more information. In Abaqus/Standard pressure penetration loads can be applied to model fluid penetrating into the surface between two contacting bodies; see Pressure penetration loading.

The following topics are discussed:

Related Topics
About mechanical contact properties
In Other Guides
*CONTACT CONTROLS
*SURFACE BEHAVIOR
Creating interaction properties
Customizing contact controls

ProductsAbaqus/StandardAbaqus/ExplicitAbaqus/CAE