Contact Modeling
General
Situations where objects come into contact with each other occur frequently in mechanical simulations. Setting up and solving contact problems is sometimes a challenging task, and this section contains information about important aspects of creating models involving contact.
In a contact analysis, you solve for the contact state and the contact forces. If friction is ignored, the state only consists of being in contact or not, and the force variable is the contact pressure in the normal direction. With friction included, there are two possible states for the relative tangential displacement when in contact:
sticking
and
sliding
. The tangential force vector is added as force variable.
The contact analysis functionality in COMSOL Multiphysics also includes the possibility to prescribe adhesion and decohesion between the contacting objects.
In this section:
•
Setting up a contact problem
•
Contact Pairs
•
Meshing for Contact Analysis
•
Constraints
•
Settings for Contact Nodes
•
Time-Dependent Contact Analysis
•
Multiphysics Contact
•
Fallback Nodes for Contact
•
Solver Settings for Contact Analysis
•
Monitoring the Solution
•
Dependent Variables in Contact Analysis
•
Important Contact Variables