ABAQUS, tube to tube contact

[otaviobarodrigues]

Hello, everyone.

I'm trying to model the contact between two concentric tubes in ABAQUS. The inner tube is elastic, while the outer one is rigid. I used PIPE31 and ITT31 elements, created a rigid surface for the outer tube, and applied hard contact. However, the model does not converge, and the message "Displacement increment for contact is too big" appears. The time step is already quite small.

 

[FEA way]

It might be better to use beam elements and general contact. In recent versions of Abaqus, GC can easily handle contact with one beam inside the other.