Self-Contact between 1D BAR (BEAM) Elements

Debarshi
Debarshi New Altair Community Member
edited December 2021 in Community Q&A

Hello,

I am trying to replicate a 3D 2 coil hellical spring into a 1D spring with connection of multiple beam element. The analysis runs and also gives correct results. Please see the attached pictures. Now I am trying to define self-contact between those BEAM elements as described in OS-T: 1540 Compression of Helical Spring using Self-Contact. But there in the example, the solid elements have been used and whereas I want to use 1D elements only. For that purpose, I have created a SET_GRID with all the nodes of BEAM elements of the spring for slave-set and left master-set empty. But then I am getting the following error 

*** ERROR # 1762 ***
Incorrect SET type for MSID on CONTACT 1.

I can not use SET_GRID for master set and when I use SET_ELEM containing all BEAM elements for master-set, then I get the following error 

*** ERROR # 4786 ***
SET(ELEM) MSID on CONTACT 1 must be shells or solids.
BAR element (22447) is not allowed.

 

Can anyone please help me in defining the self contact for the spring with BEAM element?

Thanks in advance.

 

Regards,

Debarshi

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Answers

  • Adriano A. Koga
    Adriano A. Koga
    Altair Employee
    edited December 2021

    Hi @Debarshi 

     

    As far as i remember, OptiStruct implicit doesn't support edge 2 edge contact.

    *** ERROR # 4786 ***
    SET(ELEM) MSID on CONTACT 1 must be shells or solids.

     

    I believe in your case you need to use a different approach, or, use CGAP elements for modeling these contacts. But anyway, CGAP would be very hard to use, as they're node2node connection.

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