Workbench Mechanical Contact Best

Practices

John Lin

2014 ANSYS, Inc.

June 20, 2014

ANSYS Confidential

What this presentation will cover

Section 1: Contact Setup and Verification:
Contact Management Tips for Large Models

Section 2: Getting Ready for the Solver:

Mesh Quality & Mesh Sizing

Setting the Contact Formulation
Advantages of MPC Contact
Initial Gaps and Rigid Body Motion

Section 3: Dealing With Non Convergence

Diagnostic Tools
Contact Results Tool
Procedure for Overcoming Convergence Difficulties

2014 ANSYS, Inc.

June 20, 2014

ANSYS Confidential

Section 1: Contact Management Tips for

Large Models

2014 ANSYS, Inc.

June 20, 2014

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Using Multiple Contact Folders

Multiple Connection Folders Can Be Used
Allows for different automatic detection settings
Better organize and track large numbers of contact regions

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Contact Search/Select
RMB Go To options to find Connections
acting on a Geometric Selection

Use Tags To Keep Track of

Certain Pairs Of Interest
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Using the Worksheet

The worksheet view is a great way to review all of the contact settings
Rows can be sorted
by clicking on column
header

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Column Visibility can be

controlled via RMB

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Using the Initial Contact Tool

Use the Initial Contact Tool to quickly learn about contact

status before solving.

Color coding to help user identify possible issues
Contour results such as status and Penetration can
be calculated

2014 ANSYS, Inc.

June 20, 2014

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Section 2: Getting Ready for the Solver

2014 ANSYS, Inc.

June 20, 2014

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Mesh Quality
Poor mesh quality in solid elements

can cause convergence problems.

A difficult contact problem may be
diverging simply because of the mesh

Tip: Use aggressive shape checking

for nonlinear contact problems.

Poor
Mesh
Quality
on
Contact
Surface

Better
Mesh
Quality

2014 ANSYS, Inc.

June 20, 2014

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Mesh Sizing

On curved surfaces, or surfaces

which deform to a curve, having

sufficient contact elements to
closely follow the curvature is
essential for smooth results.
This is especially true for nonlinear
contact
Use similar element sizes for the
source and target sides.

Too few elements

Better set elements with similar

mesh density

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Understanding Contact Formulation

Augmented Lagrange (Default): Suitable

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for most problems.

Pure Penalty:
Contact occurring only on Edge or Corner
MPC (Multi-Point Constraint): Ideal for all
linear contact when there is no overconstraint
Normal Lagrange:
Highest accuracy
Contact with material nonlinearities
Between shells or thin layers
Interference fit
Large Sliding

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Advantages of MPC Contact

MPC contact prevents artificial

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stiffness when gaps exist between

curved surfaces.
Ideal for shell-solid, shell-shell, and
beam-shell contacts
A caveat is that MPC is the most
sensitive contact type to over
constraint, so avoid it when there are
other contacts or boundary conditions
that overlap

2014 ANSYS, Inc.

June 20, 2014

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Gap between bonded parts

Viewing the MPC Equations

After the solution is done

MPC equations and other
FE Connections can be
graphically viewed

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Initial Gaps and Rigid Body Motion

When nonlinear contact is present, small gaps that are initial open can lead to rigid
body motion. Changing the interface treatment to Adjust to Touch or using
Contact Stabilization can be effective means to handle this situation

Mathematical adjustment to close

gap causes rigid region to exist

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No Gap

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Section 3: Dealing With Non Convergence

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Diagnostic Tool: NR Residuals

For a failed solution, requesting NewtonRaphson residuals helps identify possible
areas where changes are needed.
If Solution Fails to Converge, NR Residual
Force Objects are Populated in the Tree

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Contact Stiffness
High stiffness leads to reduced penetration and increasing accuracy.
But higher contact stiffness can also lead to ill-conditioning and divergence.
Poor Convergence; many
bisections, 122 iterations

Good Convergence due to

stiffness being reduced by user;
no bisections, 30 iterations
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Contact Stiffness Factor: Tips

For bulk-dominated problems, start with the default

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of 1.
For bending (thin structures) problems, start with
0.01 0.1.
For contacts with difficulty converging, lower the
stiffness
For pretension problems, use a stiffness factor
greater than one, because penetration can strongly
influence the pretension forces.
Set Update Stiffness to a frequency of
Each Iteration (Default in WB Mechanical)
When there is difficulty converging due to high
penetration, increase the stiffness.

2014 ANSYS, Inc.

June 20, 2014

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Diagnostic Tool: Contact Result Tracker

Provides contact information
during solution.

The trends observed can help

diagnose problems.

For instance, a decreasing

number of contact points
indicate a loss of contact

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Making Use of Partial Solutions

When a Solution fails to fully converge, reviewing results at the
converged sub-steps can still be post-processed. This can be very helpful
to diagnose the issue.

Failed Partial
Solution

Converged Steps
able to be postprocessed
The contact status is a useful sanity check for understanding the
global behavior and finding problem areas.

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Checklist for Overcoming Convergence

Difficulties
Identify the problematic contact region(s) using:

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Contact tracking
Contact results (e.g. status, penetration)
Force convergence plots
NR residuals
Once identified, possible remedies:
Check Mesh Quality.
Adjust the Contact Stiffness
Check for proper initial conditions/pinball.
Change to nodal detection if the problem is at a corner.
Reduce the time step size before and during the onset of the divergence.
If immediately diverges based on poor initial contact conditions(not well
engaged or rigid body motion) try using aggressive contact stiffness
update
Last resort: Add stabilization(contact or global)

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Summary
Good modelling starts at the beginning

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Use contact grouping for efficient bookkeeping

Inspect contact before solving; solving >> pre-processing

Understand your contact settings, use linear contact when you can

Start with a simplified model

Use residual plots to pinpoint location of instability

2014 ANSYS, Inc.

June 20, 2014

ANSYS Confidential