General contact in Abaqus/Standard

In the channel forming example in Abaqus/Standard 2D example: forming a channel, contact interaction is defined using the contact pairs algorithm, which requires you to explicitly define the surfaces that may potentially come into contact. As an alternative, you can specify contact in an Abaqus/Standard analysis by using the general contact algorithm. The contact interaction domain, contact properties, and surface attributes are specified independently for general contact, offering a more flexible way to add detail incrementally to a model. The simple interface for specifying general contact allows for a highly automated contact definition; however, it is also possible to define contact with the general contact interface to mimic traditional contact pairs. Conversely, specifying self-contact of a surface spanning multiple bodies with the contact pair user interface (if the surface-to-surface formulation is used) mimics the highly automated approach often used for general contact.

In Abaqus/Standard, traditional pairwise specifications of contact interactions will often result in more efficient analyses as compared to an all-inclusive self-contact approach to defining contact. Therefore, there is often a trade-off between ease of defining contact and analysis performance. Abaqus/CAE provides a contact detection tool that greatly simplifies the process of creating traditional contact pairs for Abaqus/Standard (see Understanding contact and constraint detection).