Abaqus errors help

[Mpopaj]

Hello,

I am trying to look at an analysis on a progressive spring for a project. I am a bit of a novice with Abaqus. I got a spring from grab cad and ran through the whole project. I placed a plate on top and bottom of the spring so that I can apply a load. If I have the contraints tied I get an error that the volume of several elements are small, negative, or zero. So I applied a friction factor of 0.5 at the surfaces. Now, the only way I can get a job analysis is if I set a displacement of -5 on the upper plate. If I increase the displacement to something like -20 or even higher, I get an infinite amount of attempts for the first increment. The same error happens when I leave the boundary condition for the top plate as free in thee Y direction and apply a load of any magnitude. Please let me know how I can fix this. I need to be able to apply a load or a bigger displacement for my project.
TIA

 

[FEA way]

Disable adjustment in tie constraints to elimimate that error. When it comes to the second case with contact, it’s normal that the analysis can’t converge when there are unconstrained rigid body motions. It’s best to apply displacement instead of force to avoid such issues. If you want to use contact, choose general contact so that it accounts also for potential self-contact of the deforming spring.

 

[Mpopaj]

Disabling adjustment and using displacement worked. Thank you very much.