Theory of Rigid Body Contact
The Rigid Body Contact is used to model structural contact between rigid bodies. When modeling contact between two bodies, one body is referred to as the source, and the other as the destination. The source can be a spherical (3D), cylindrical (3D) or circular (2D) rigid body. The destination selection can be defined on spherical (3D), cylindrical (3D), circular (2D) or planar rigid bodies, as well as on arbitrary shaped rigid or elastic bodies.
A penalty method is used to calculate the contact force between the source and destination. The penalty factor defines the stiffness of a spring inserted between the source and destination boundaries.
Depending on the shape of the source and destination, different types of formulations are available in the Rigid Body Contact node. They are:
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Spherical to Spherical Formulation.
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Spherical to Cylindrical Formulation.
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Spherical to Planar Formulation.
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Spherical to Arbitrary Formulation.
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Cylindrical to Cylindrical Formulation.
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Cylindrical to Planar Formulation.
The formulation is the same in 2D, except that the cylindrical shaped formulation is not available in 2D and all spherical shaped bodies are replaced by circular shaped bodies.