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*CONTACT PAIR

Keyword type: model definition

This option is used to express that two surfaces can make contact. There is one required parameter: INTERACTION, and two mutually exclusive optional parameters: SMALL SLIDING and IN-FACE SLIDING. The dependent surface is called the slave surface, the independent surface is the master surface. Surfaces are defined using the *SURFACE. The dependent surface must be defined as a nodal surface (option TYPE=NODE on the *SURFACE keyword), whereas the independent surface should be defined as a set of element faces.

The INTERACTION parameter takes the name of the surface interaction (keyword *SURFACE INTERACTION) which applies to the contact pair. The surface interaction defines the nature of the contact (hard versus soft contact..)

If the SMALL SLIDING and the IN-FACE SLIDING parameters are not active, the contact is large sliding. This means that the pairing between the nodes belonging to the dependent surface and faces of the independent surface is performed anew in every iteration. If the SMALL SLIDING parameter is active, the pairing is done once at the start of every increment and kept during the complete increment. If the IN-FACE SLIDING is active, the pairing is done only once at the start of every step. IN-FACE SLIDING usually converges better than SMALL SLIDING and SMALL SLIDING converges faster than LARGE SLIDING, since changes in the pairing can deteriorate the convergence rate.

First line:

- *CONTACT PAIR
- enter the required parameter INTERACTION and its parameter.

Following line:

- Name of the slave surface (must be nodal).
- Name of the master surface (must be based on element faces).

    Example:

    *CONTACT PAIR,INTERACTION=IN1
    dep,ind

defines a contact pair consisting of the nodal surface dep as dependent surface and the element face surface ind als independent surface. The name of the surface interaction is IN1.

Example files: contact1, contact2.

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