ABAQUS/Explicit - Thickness Adjustement??

[pirs]

I got the following warning on .sta file from a model I am running. It uses the general contact algorithm and this formulation has worked successfully on different cases where only some of the geometric dimensions are changed.

***WARNING: In step 1, some facet thicknesses for general contact were reduced
from the parent element or specified values due to a large
thickness compared to facet dimensions. The most significant
thickness scaling factor was 0.20965 for a facet on parent element
1535 of instance BEAM-1. An element set named
"WarnElemGContThickReduce" has been created for use in
ABAQUS/Viewer to locate the regions of reduced thickness.

I have found out that the entire deformable surface (slave surface) on the contact definition has suffered a thickness re-scaling. Can anyone give me some insight on why I am getting this result and how it can be overcome?

Thanks in advance,
Pirs

 

[pirs]

I think the following additional information might be relevant:

shell finite element model - element S4R.

element thickness = 4.72mm

smallest element facet ~= 1mm (some very small elements are used to model a rounded corner)

could this be the problem ? The fact that the element size is smaller than the thickness ?