Abaqus Tutorial 30 - Chain - Stab - Simuleon

Chain: geometric smoothing,
contact stabilization.
Simuleon B.V.
Sint Antoniestraat 7 5314 LG Bruchem
T. +31418644-699 E. info@simuleon.nl W. www.simuleon.nl
1. Introduction
This exercise is intended to show two useful Abaqus capabilities related to
contact handling: geometric surface smoothing and contact stabilization.
- Geometric smoothing can be applied to all those surfaces that can be

described with analytical functions (cylinders, spheres, revolved surfaces etc). It
basically helps the contact algorithm in finding an accurate measurement of the
opening/closures between contacting surfaces, thus reducing the number of
iterations needed to converge.
- Contact stabilization. Many mechanical assemblies rely on contact between

bodies to prevent unconstrained rigid body motion. Often it is impractical or
impossible to model such systems with contact initially established (chains,
complex mechanisms). In this case, if two parts are not fully in contact but gaps
exist among them (poor CAD) at the beginning of the analysis, rigid body motions
and convergence issues can arise at the first increment. This problem is
especially critical if the system is under load-control. Contact stabilization is a
useful tool to overcome this issue.
In this example, a metallic chain will be stretched using both loading and
displacement conditions. Two cases (contact fully engaged and gap among two
rings) are analyzed to investigate the potentials of geometric smoothing and
contact stabilization.
The model will be already pre-defined in terms of geometry, meshing and
material properties. Your only task will be to define the interactions and loading
conditions.
2. Preliminaries
- Double click on the file Contact5.cae, this will open an Abaqus database where
you will already find two models called Model-DISP and Model-DISP-GAP
including the geometric parts, the instance positioning in the assembly and the
discretization of the parts. In the first model, the rings are fully in contact while in
the second model a small gap among the two rings is introduced in the assembly.
- The model (Figure 1) is actually one eighth of the model shown in the title
page to exploit the symmetry occurring in the three principal planes and reduce
the cost of the analysis.
Figure 1. Assembly of the chain. Engaged configuration (left) and with gap (right).
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3. Material, Assembly, Mesh and Symmetry
- Check the materials and section assignments. Standard stainless steel is
used.
- Check the assembly and predefined meshes by entering the Mesh module and
choosing Assembly.
- Double-click on Boundary Conditions in the model tree and look at the already
predefined symmetry conditions.
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4. Case A: Engaged contact, Displacement control
- Double click Model-DISP in the model tree. Create new Interaction Property by
double-clicking Interaction Properties in the model tree, call it IntProp-1 and
select Contact as Type. Select Hard contact for Mechanical Normal
Behaviour. Click OK.
- Create a new Surface-to-Surface contact. Double-click on Interactions, Select

Initial as Step and Surface-to-Surface as Type. Select Ring-Half.Surf-INT as
master surface and Ring.Surf-INT as slave surface. Select IntProp-1 as
Interaction Property. Click OK.
- Create a new Displacement boundary condition by double-clicking Boundary

Conditions, select Step-1 as Step, rename it BC-DISP and choose
Displacement as Type. Select the set called Ring.Set-BC as region and enter
0.05 in the U3 field. Click OK.
- Create a new Job called Contact5-DISP, make sure you select Model-DISP as
source and submit it.
- Once finished, open the monitor, count the number of iterations needed to
fine the final converged solution and view the results. Remember to mirror the
model in all three planed to visualize the complete model.
- Save the model. File  Save.
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5. Case B: Effect of Geometric Surface Smoothing
- Copy the model Model-DISP as Model-DISP-SMOOTH.
- Edit the Interaction Int-1 to include surface smoothing. Make sure you are in
the Initial step (see Figure), and double-click on Int-1 in the model tree. Enter the
Surface Smoothing tab and select ‘Automatically smooth 3D geometry surface
when applicable’. Click OK.
- Create a new Job called Contact5-DISP-SMOOTH, make sure you select

Model-DISP-SMOOTH as source and submit it.
- Once finished, open the monitor, count the number of iterations needed to
fine the final converged solution and view the results. The number of iteration
should be smaller than the previous case. It seems useless in this simple case
but consider large models where each iteration lasts several minutes. This option
could save a lot of simulation time.
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6. Case C: Displacement control with Gap.
- Double-click on Model-DISP-GAP in the model tree. Repeat the previous steps
to create the Interaction property, Interaction (include surface smoothing) and
displacement boundary condition. This time, enter 0.15 as displacement in the
U3 direction to consider the gap while moving the ring.
- Create and run a new Job called Contact5-DISP-GAP. In this case, you will
notice that no convergence problems arise and the solution smoothly completes.
- View the results and check that they are similar to the previous cases. Gaps
with displacement conditions are not a big issue.
7. Case D: Load control with Gap.

- Copy Model-DISP-GAP to create a new model called Model-LOAD-GAP.
- Suppress the displacement boundary condition, right click on BC-DISP and

select Suppress.
- Create a new Load by double-clicking on Loads in the model tree. Select Step-
1 as step, Surface traction as type, select the surface Surf-Load as region and
enter 0.75 as magnitude. Clik on the arrow close to Vector before project and
anter (0,0,0) as starting point and (0,0,1) as ending point to define the direction of
the surface traction. Click OK.
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- Create a new Job called Contact5-LOAD-GAP, submit and monitor the solution.
As you will notice, the solution will not converge and the Job will abort. The load
applied will cause a rigid body motion of the full ring to which no stiffness will
oppose the deformation. The stiffness matrix of the system is singular (det=0)
and cannot be inverted  numerical singularity.
- This problem will not occur in case of assembly with contact initially established
(case A or B). If you want, you can try to solve the first case replacing the
displacement condition with the surface traction previously defined.
8. Case E: Load control with Gap and contact

stabilization.
- So, displacement-control allows rigid body motions while load-control does not
allow it. However, it is not always possible to provide displacement boundary
conditions to an assembly. Most of the times the dispalcements are unknowns
which depend on known loading conditions. Moreover, creating an assembly of
parts which are already fully in contact is sometimes practically impossible. To
overcome this issue, it is possible to include in the simualtion a contact
stabilization strategy that allows the solution of such problems.
- In the Model-LOAD-GAP, Create a new contact stabilization control. Double-

click on Contact Controls in the model tree, select Abaqus/Standard controls,
tick on Automatic Stabilization and keep all the default settings. Click OK.
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- Double-click on the interaction Int-1 previously created. Edit interaction by
selecting ContCtlr-1 in the last menu of the Edit Interaction dialog box. Click OK.
- Create a new Job called Contact5-LOAD-GAP-STAB, make sure you select the
Model-LOAD-GAP as source. Submit the analysis and view the results.
- In this case, you will notice that the simulation smoothly converges until the end
since the newly implemented contact controls help in handling the initial rigid
body motions and engage contact.
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Abaqus Tutorial 30 - Chain - Stab - Simuleon

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Chain: geometric smoothing,

- Geometric smoothing can be applied to all those surfaces that can be

- Contact stabilization. Many mechanical assemblies rely on contact between

- Create a new Surface-to-Surface contact. Double-click on Interactions, Select

- Create a new Displacement boundary condition by double-clicking Boundary

- Save the model. File  Save.

- Copy the model Model-DISP as Model-DISP-SMOOTH.

- Create a new Job called Contact5-DISP-SMOOTH, make sure you select

- Save the model. File  Save.

- Save the model. File  Save.

7. Case D: Load control with Gap.

- Suppress the displacement boundary condition, right click on BC-DISP and

- Save the model. File  Save.

8. Case E: Load control with Gap and contact

- In the Model-LOAD-GAP, Create a new contact stabilization control. Double-

- Save the model. File  Save.

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