Customizing contact controls

The contact controls editors allow you to modify the algorithms used to enforce contact conditions. The default contact controls are usually sufficient, but customizing these controls may result in a more cost-effective solution.

Warning:

Contact controls are intended for advanced users. The default settings of these controls are appropriate for most analyses. Using nondefault values of these controls may greatly increase the computational time of the analysis or produce inaccurate results. Changing these settings in an Abaqus/Standard analysis may also cause convergence problems.

  1. From the main menu bar, select InteractionContact ControlsCreate.

  2. In the Create Contact Controls dialog box that appears, do the following:

    • Name the contact controls.

    • Select Abaqus/Standard contact controls or Abaqus/Explicit contact controls.

  3. Click Continue.

    The editor for the type of contact controls that you specified appears.

  4. In the editor, enter the data necessary to customize the contact controls. For detailed instructions, see the following sections:

  5. If you want to reset the values in the editor to the default values, click Defaults at the bottom of the editor.

  6. Click OK to save your customized settings and to exit the editor.