Contact damping

Contact damping:

  • can be defined to oppose the relative motion between the interacting surfaces (in addition to the contact pressure-overclosure relationships discussed in Contact pressure-overclosure relationships and the friction models discussed in Frictional behavior);

  • can affect both the motion normal and tangential to the surfaces;

  • in the normal direction is proportional to the relative velocity between the surfaces;

  • in the tangential direction is proportional to the relative tangential velocity in Abaqus/Standard and to the “elastic slip rate” associated with friction (see Frictional behavior for a discussion of elastic slip) in Abaqus/Explicit—hence, in Abaqus/Explicit it does not resist the bulk of tangential sliding;

  • is not applicable for linear perturbation procedures;

  • in Abaqus/Standard it contributes to the force and stiffness definition and should generally be used only when it is otherwise impossible to obtain a solution—the best method for allowing a viscous pressure and shear stress to be transmitted between the contact surfaces in Abaqus/Standard to reduce convergence difficulties due to the sudden violation of contact constraints (common in some snap-through and buckling problems involving contact) is to specify the damping on a step-by-step basis using contact controls, as discussed in Automatic stabilization of rigid body motions in contact problems; and

  • can be useful in Abaqus/Explicit to reduce solution noise—a small amount of viscous contact damping is used by default for softened contact and penalty contact in Abaqus/Explicit, as discussed below.

The following topics are discussed:

Related Topics
About mechanical contact properties
In Other Guides
*CONTACT DAMPING
Creating interaction properties

ProductsAbaqus/StandardAbaqus/ExplicitAbaqus/CAE