When performing a multi-body contact analysis, unexpected part deformations, contact stress distributions and/or contact pair load transfer checks may be caused by one or more of the following common issues:

Read More

StressCheck's multi-body contact algorithm does not require mesh conformity or a 1:1 ratio between contacting element faces. In fact, the element face distribution across assigned contact zones can be quite dissimilar in most practical applications.

Read More

StressCheck's implementation of multi-body contact requires the assignment of a contact constant (Kc) to pair two neighboring contact zones. The units for the contact constant are [F/L/L^2], the same as spring coefficient constraints.

Read More

In StressCheck, mixed mapping refers to the situation where isoparametric/quadratic and geometric (high order blended function) element mappings coexist within the same mesh.

Read More

The StressCheck Resultant tab allows the user to integrate the tractions over the edges (2D) or faces (3D) of the elements to calculate the resultant forces Fx, Fy, Fz and moments Mx, My, Mz.  This can be done over selected edges/faces, or over entire element boundaries.

Read More

When compared to a single-part analysis, a multi-body contact analysis of the same degrees of freedom (DOF) is more computationally demanding.  This increase in computational time is due to the nonlinear iterations required to accurately depict high-gradient pressure distributions between complex parts, especially if the part count (and by extension the number of contact pairs) is high.

Read More

When elastic-plastic effects do not need to be considered in a multi-body contact analysis (i.e. the converged maximum von Mises stress in the parts is below the yield stress of the materials), only the Linear Elasticity solver is required.

Read More

Currently, there is not a capability to combine incremental plasticity (Type: Material (NL Mat) with Technique: Incremental) or general/geometric nonlinear (Type: General (NL Gen)) solutions with multi-body contact.

Read More

No, the Modal/Buckling solver cannot currently be combined with multi-body contact analysis. The Modal/Buckling solver is for eigenvalue/eigenmode analysis for single parts.

Read More