Define Contact Conditions

You define contacts manually by selecting pairs of faces; these contacts are useful for cases in which the initial default contact tolerance is too small. Before manually adding contacts, use Automatic Contacts to detect the in-tolerance contact conditions.

1. In the Contacts panel, click Automatic. Contact conditions are automatically defined using the Contact defaults from the Stress Analysis Settings.

As you manually add contacts, you choose from various contact types such as Separation, Sliding / No Separation, and so on.

We will now define manual contacts and set them to the Separation type. Additionally, we will modify two automatically created contacts to be the Separation type.

1. Click the Manual command.
2. Set the Contact Type to Separation.
3. Select the faces for the new contacts as follows
   1. 
      In the graphics region, click the Bolt cylindrical face as selection 1.
   2. 
      Move the cursor over the area where the Bolt component passes through the Bracket. When the cylindrical face on the Bracket highlights, click to select it.
   3. Click Apply.
   4. Reorient the model to do the same for the similar area near the Bolt head.
   5. 
      Click the cylindrical face of the Bolt component.
   6. 
      Move the cursor over the area where the Bolt component passes through the Bracket. When the cylindrical face on the Bracket highlights, click to select it.
   7. Click OK.

Now, we modify two automatic contacts to change them to the Separation contact type.

1. In the browser, expand the Contacts and then the Bonded folders.
2. Select contact Bonded:1, then hold down the Ctrl key and select contact Bonded:2.
3. Over one of the selected contacts, right-click and select Edit Contact.
4. Select Separation from the Contact Type drop-down list. It assigns the selected contact condition.
5. Click OK.

With the contact conditions defined, we can move to specifying the mesh settings.

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