Specifying entity options for contact detection

The Entities tabbed page allows you to control the types of geometry and elements that are included in a search. You can use these options to ignore certain features of a model or part instance that are not essential to contact interactions or constraints; for example, a layer of membrane elements on the outside of a solid body. Removing features from a search may also improve performance; for example, if all the contacting faces in a complex model are planar, removing cylindrical and spline-based features from the contact pair search may lead to faster search times. In general, the default entity options provide acceptable performance and should be modified only if a search is taking an excessively long time to complete.

Related Topics
Understanding contact and constraint detection
Using contact and constraint detection

  1. From the main menu, select either InteractionFind contact pairs or ConstraintFind contact pairs.

    Tip: You can also find contact pairs using the tool in the Interaction module toolbox.

    Abaqus/CAE displays the contact detection dialog box.

  2. Display the Entities tabbed page.

  3. By default, Abaqus/CAE factors in shell thickness and offset properties when calculating the separation between shell entities. To ignore shell section properties and calculate separations based solely on the geometric representation of shell entities in a model, toggle off Account for shell thickness and offset during search.

  4. When performing a search of geometry, toggle the following features in the Search the following geometric entities field to include or exclude them from the search domain:

    • Planar refers to all flat faces in a model. These features are toggled on by default.

    • Cylindrical/Spherical/Toroidal refers to curved faces in a model that were generated by extruding or revolving a straight, circular, or elliptical line. These features are toggled on by default.

    • Spline-based refers to irregularly curved faces in a model that were generated from spline lines or paths (see Sketching splines for more information). These features are toggled on by default.

  5. When performing a search of meshed geometry, toggle the following element types in the Search the following mesh entities field to include or exclude them from the search domain:

    • Solid refers to faces on solid continuum elements. These elements are toggled on by default.

    • Shell refers to faces on shell elements. These elements are toggled on by default.

    • Membrane refers to faces on membrane or surface elements. These elements are toggled off by default.