Contact between beams undergoing large displacements can be encountered in many practical applications. Some examples are hydrogen sensors, water supply lines, nuclear power plant piping, cable wires and coils, woven fabrics, and tennis racquet strings. You can model 3D beam-to-beam contact by using the 3D line contact element, CONTA177.

As an alternative to using CONTA177 elements, you can also use the 2D surface-to-surface contact element, CONTA172, to model 2D beam-to-beam contact (see Surface-to-Surface Contact (Pair-Based) for more information).