Implicit Contact Problem

[Zpierre]

I am currently working on a complex contact problem involving 10 interlocking components made of 2 simple isotropic polymers. I have already set up the problem using ABAQUS explicit and general contact interactions. Frictionless contact and mass scaling was used, but the explicit problem still took extremely long to run.

I keep trying to set up the problem to use Abaqus implicit. Initially I had errors about elements with zero or negative volume, but this was alleviated by eliminating overclosure adjustments. Now I am getting frequent errors about slave surfaces interacting with each other. In addition, the solution never converges. Can anyone help me out here? Should I be using exponential overclosure-pressure?

 

[rstupplebeen]

Posting pictures and/or models will greatly help in our understanding of you problem. With the information provided all I can recommend is to only change 1 value from default at a time after reading what it does in the help files.

Rob Stupplebeen

 

[Zpierre]

Attached is a picture of the problem. The top portion of the assembly has a pressure of 5.3 MPa applied to it. The side and bottom portions have displacement constraints (the side ones can be seen in this picture).

When I try to run this system in explicit, it fails several hours in complaining about wave speed and element deformation. As I stated earlier about the implicit model,I initially had errors about elements with zero or negative volume, but this was alleviated by eliminating overclosure adjustments. Now I am getting frequent errors about slave surfaces interacting with each other. In addition, the solution never converges.

 

[Zpierre]

Here is an easier to view version of the above image: