Which Contact Type for Contact between Beam and Shell elements

M.M.

Hello,

I want to modell a bending process of a tube with a mandrel, which is made of a deformable steelrope on which several spherical segments (rigid bodies) are placed. I modeled the steelrope as a beam element, while the segements are made of shell elements. Since the beam element is a line-element I am not sure, which contact type is correct here.

I tried Type 19 with the Steelrope as Slave components and the Segments as Master component, but I get error 119: Lagrangian surface is empty. I think the problem is, that the program expects a surface and no beam elements. When I try to enter elements / faces instead of components as Slave it only allows shell elements.

So which Type of contact is correct to model such an interaction. The steelrope made of beam elements is defined as a part. Is the orientation of the beam elements relevant for the contact definition?

Thank you very much in advance

M.M.

Guilherme_

Hello,

The contact TYPE19 combines two symmetric TYPE7 (node to surface) and one TYPE11 interface (edge to edge). To define the interface, you should point to two surface sets, that's why when you try to use a beam element, you get an error message.

In your case, as you are interested in edge-to-edge contact, you should use the TYPE11 interface. For this interface, you should point to two line sets.

You can find more information about TYPE11 here: https://help.altair.com/hwsolvers/rad/topics/solvers/rad/inter_type11_starter_r.htm#inter_type11_starter_r

The orientation of the beam is not relevant to the contact definition.