How To Utilize Contact Stabilization Damping Correctly — Lesson 2

In engineering simulations, proper definition of contact is required to accurately model interaction between two bodies. However, in some cases, components in an assembly may not be touching each other initially. In such cases, the components may undergo some rigid body motion before contact is detected between them, which may lead to non-convergence. In this lesson, we discuss a few ways to resolve this problem and demonstrate the use of one such option, Contact Stabilization Damping, in Ansys Mechanical.

Alternate video link.

Simulation Files

Download the accompanying geometry and archived files here.

Important Note: If you are using Mechanical 2021R1 or a later version, use a value of 1e-5 for the Contact Stabilization Damping Factor. The algorithm for calculating the tangential damping factor was revised in 2021R1 to more efficiently prevent rigid body motion, and hence a much smaller value of the Stabilization Damping Factor is required in 2021R1 or later versions.

The student version of Ansys simulation software can be downloaded here.