Contact Area Calculation in Mechanical

- March 20, 2020 at 4:47 pm
  
  utkug
  Subscriber
  
  Hello,
  
  I was wondering if there is a way to calculate the contact are in between two adjacent faces? Is there a way to do it through the mechanical editor or do I need custom APDL commands?
  
  Utku
- March 24, 2020 at 4:22 pm
  
  SaiD
  Ansys Employee
  
  Hi,
  
  You can try the following: Once your system is solved, right click on Solution Information --> Insert --> Contact. Under the Details, choose Type --> Contacting Area and under Contact Region choose the appropriate contact pair. Then right click and click on Evaluate all Trackers. This should give you the contact area for that particular contact pair.
  
  Hope this helps,
  
  Sai
- March 26, 2020 at 1:40 am
  
  utkug
  Subscriber
  
  Hello Sai,
  
  Your suggestion worked great! I have a question about the resulting contact area. Does the result show only one side of the contact or does it show the total contact area, such as contact area + target area?
  
  Utku
- March 30, 2020 at 2:42 pm
  
  SaiD
  Ansys Employee
  
  Hello Utku,
  
  If you look at the table under "Contact" and go through the explanation under "Property/Description", it says that the result tracking is performed on the Contact side of that contact pair:
  
  https://ansyshelp.ansys.com/account/secured?returnurl=/Views/Secured/corp/v201/en/wb_sim/ds_Result_Tracker_structural.html
  
  Hope this helps! If your question has been answered satisfactorily, please mark the corresponding answer so that we know this question has been resolved.
  
  Thanks
  
  Sai
  - September 7, 2023 at 6:19 am
    
    Kariuki Karanja
    Subscriber
    
    Hello Sai, I am stuck on calculating of contact area in ANSYS 2022. I can't find the option to calculate contact area. I only see penetration gap and the others . kindly assist
- March 30, 2020 at 7:08 pm
  
  utkug
  Subscriber
  
  Thank you so much Sai!
- June 16, 2023 at 4:17 pm
  
  Thomas Draper
  Subscriber
  
  When using this result tracking tool for contacting area, the output is either 0 or the actual area of contact depending on what is set for Contact Side option (contact or target). What area is actually reported here? Why does it return 0 for one or the other in what seems like a random order? For example, I have hundreds of bonded contact defined in my model. When using the results tracker for contacting area, one contact pair will return the value for the contact side, then the next pair will return 0 for the contact side, but a value for the target side. I'm interested in recording the minimum of the areas between the target and contact pairs for use in shear stress calcs. Any suggestions?
- September 6, 2023 at 1:08 pm
  
  Kariuki Karanja
  Subscriber
  
  Why am I not getting that option to calculate the contact area. I am using ANSYS 2022R1.