Shell element thickness 1

[R.Eng]

I'm working on forming of sheet metal.The element type is S4R.
I want to know whether I should consider the thickness of shell for the Gap between rollers or not? The shell section offset is Bottom type.
Thickness is 12 mm.

 

[FEA way]

From your previous threads I remember that you use general contact and explicit solver for this analysis. Not only thickness is considered by contact algorithm in this case but also offsets. Thus, you should account for that when positioning parts relative to each other (it may be useful to enable shell thickness rendering when doing this).

 

[R.Eng]

I don't know how to find the amount of thickness reduction in this warning, in order to position rollers relative to each other?!
The thickness used in the general contact algorithm for elements in element set WarnElemGContThickReduce has been reduced. See the status file for further details.

 

[FEA way]

You can use the STH (section thickness) and CTHICK (contact thickness) field output variables for this purpose.

 

[oldNail]

This happens because your mesh is so fine. You can disable the contact thickness reduction if you exclude self contact and perimeter as described here:

https://www.cati.com/blog/2019/02/abaqus-contact-quirks-automatic-shell-thickness-reduction-and-you/