Penetration master slave surface mesh size

[fisken90]

Hi everybody!

In a contact analysis in Abaqus, you should always have a denser slave surface than master so you don't experience penetration. I found this picture to illustrate:

https://www.sharcnet.ca/Software/Abaqus/6.11.2/books/gsa/graphics/gsx-pure-mast-slave-nls.png

.

I use a 4-node shell element mesh (R3D4), in contact with a solid 3d 20-node brick element. In contact it means the 20-node brick in the plane have 8 nodes against the 4-nodes in the shell elements. Do I then need to have a four times finer mesh in the shell elements then in the solid elements? If this was understandable?

Thanks for every input!

 

[Mustaine3]

R3D4 is a rigid element which should always be master. So I assume the hex-mesh (slave) has already more nodes on the outside and then it is ok.

Use general contact or surface-to-surface contact pairs. These formulations also reduce the mesh density issue.

 

[cooken]

I have found the relative stiffness of layers to be more important in many cases, so keep that in mind.

Also you may want to think about using linear bricks instead of quadratic ones for contact.