Contact interface connections

[jwilkerson]

Hi All,

I am trying to run a simulation that has two steel tires running on four trunnions. I set up a contact interface connection between each trunnion and it's respective tire. Everything is fine until I try to run the analysis and I get insufficiently constrained elements in the shells between the tires. I did get it to run by suppressing the trunnions and creating a surface region on the tire that is constrained. This however, gives me higher stresses on the tire because it is a hard connection. Any thoughts on how to set up the constraints?

WF 4.0 M100

Thanks,

Jody

[ptcuser11]

Hello Jody,

Mechanica does not support contact with shell elements. For some reason, there is no real error message or anything preventing a user from creating the contact interfaces on geometry that will be meshed with shell elements.

However, you can try modeling the tires as solids. It may require a very fine mesh in the region of contact to ensure that the stresses are adequately resolved through the thickness of the tire.

Hopefully some of this will help. If you still have issues post back.

Good luck,

Steve

Stephen Seymour, PE

Principal Engineer

Seymour Engineering & Consulting Group, LLC

www.seymourecg.com