I am trying to simulate an experiment: I have modeled a 9" thick concrete deck sitting on a 0.5" steel plate (all with 4-node 2D-solid elements with a thickness of 24"). Please see the picture attached. A uniform temperature of -10 F is applied on the concrete deck which makes the concrete to shrink. Since the deck is constrained (in 2 points) to the steel plate, an interaction happens between the two parts and thank to the CONTA175/TARGE169 between the parts, i get very reasonable results, as I was expected.
So far, I have assumed that the steel plate is a simply supported beam (the two very end nodes of the plate are restrained in X and Y directions).
Now I wanna go one step further (baby steps)...I wanna put the steel plate on the floor. So, I decided to introduce new series of contact elements between the steel plate and the structural floor. Please see the details in the attached pictures. Well I fail to do that, surely I need to study the contact technology very precisely, but I am really wondering what's the problem.
What I need in few more words: Introducing a flexible-rigid contact action between the plate and the floor. It may sound very stupid but I defined the floor (the target) with some nodes been constrained in all DOF's and then defined them as the "target". I also defined the bottom nodes of the plate as the "contact". Do you think that I am a long way off?! Such a terrible mistake?!
Thanks Stringmaker...I really appreciate your help :-----)
