Default Contacts Tool Guides and Options
Default Contacts Tool Guides
The following tool guides are available for default (Bonded or Sliding) Contact groups:
Select body |
Narrow the selection of contacts shown to show only contacts on the selected body. |
Select secondary body |
Narrow the selection of contacts shown even further to only the contacts between this secondary body and the primary body. |
Select face |
Narrow the selection of contacts shown to show only contacts on the selected face. |
Select secondary face |
Narrow the selection of contacts shown even further to only the contacts between this secondary face and the primary face. |
Select markers |
Manually select markers for individual contacts to be converted. |
Default Contacts Tool Options
The following tool options are available for default Contact groups:
| Convert to sliding | Select to convert the contact to a sliding contact. If only one contact is selected, an individual contact is added to the physics tree. If more than one is selected, a new contact group is added to the physics tree. |
| Convert to joint | Select to convert the contact to a joint. Each contact is converted and added as an individual joint in the physics tree. |
| Convert to permanently bonded | For contact groups other than the Bonded Contacts (default) group, select to ensure the contact is always recognized as a bonded contact. |
| Exclude from contact detection | Select to ensure the contact is no longer automatically detected. |
The following additional options are available for the default contact group when expanded:
| Detection distance | Sets the Min and Max radius of contact detection that Discovery will use to obtain a good convergence during solve. |
| Contact Face Grouping | To modify the grouping behavior, select an option:
|
| Specify thermal conductance |
In a structural-thermal simulation, enable to specify the conductive heat transfer between contact surfaces. You can specify the thermal conductance as a value, or you can specify a material and material thickness, which Discovery then uses to compute the thermal conductance (material conductivity/thickness). If thermal conductance is not switched on, heat is transferred between the two faces as if there was perfect conduction. If contact occurs, a small value of thermal contact conductance yields a measured amount of imperfect contact and a temperature discontinuity across the contact surfaces. A small thermal contact conductance can also be used to represent a thin layer of material with a different conductivity, such as a gasket. For large values of thermal contact conductance, the resulting temperature discontinuity tends to vanish and perfect thermal contact is approached. With a zero value, however, the solver assumes that no heat is transferred across the contacting surfaces. Note: While Discovery can solve with a value of 0, which specifies no heat transfer between
the faces, a project with a 0 value for thermal conductance is invalid
when exported to Workbench. You must then replace zero conductance with
some small value.
|
| Strength limits |
Select to specify the Shear and Tensile stress limits of the bond during service conditions if the contacts are not perfectly bonded. After solving, you can assess your contacts in the Connection Assessment Tool. This tool cycles through the connections and shows whether they pass or fail the factor of safety based on these specified shear and tensile limit values. |
| Shear stress | Specify the shear stress limit of the bond during service conditions. This is used when monitoring the factor of safety of the contact. Contact failure is not simulated. |
| Tensile stress | Specify the tensile stress limit of the bond during service conditions. This is used when monitoring the factor of safety of the contact. Contact failure is not simulated. |