Reply To: Force Convergence Issue in Solder Joint Reliability Simulations

[peteroznewman]

If the Fixed Support was one vertex on a solid body at the intersection between two planes of symmetry, you don't need to replace that with a Remote Displacement.  I was guessing you had selected the entire bottom face of the FR4 and that would be a problem, the vertex only is fine.

How many bonded contacts between layers do you need to define? If it is 2 bonded contacts between 3 layers, then you need 3 components. Contacts are useful if you want to turn them off and on during the simulation. You can't do that with Shared Topology.  Contacts are useful if you want to define a thermal resistance instead of having perfect thermal contact between layers, which is what you get with Shared Topology.  Contacts are required if you want a frictional contact, you can't do that with Shared Topology.

I see there are 12 components, but you may not need 11 bonded contact sets to hold everyting together. Shared Topology can reduce slightly the solution time and give clean stress results at the interface between materials. Contacts can make the stresses at the interface become noisy because the nodes don't have to be lined up.