• Registered: 13-01-2017
  • Posts: 25

Topic: contact problem with interface elements

Hey all,

I'm trying to model a contact problem with a cantilever beam that is "hit" by an object. As far as I understood, there is no possibility to model a contact problem with an initial gap, right? So I cannot really model a nonlinear contact problem?

In most of the test files for interface elements the StaticStructural analysis type is used. However, there is no documentation for it, so I don't want to use it. Which one would you advise? StaticStructural?

I don't get my files to run. I would be thankful if anyone can look through.

Post's attachments

rerinterface.in 3.22 kb, 5 downloads since 2017-02-15 

You don't have the permssions to download the attachments of this post.
  • From: Gothenburg, Sweden
  • Registered: 08-09-2009
  • Posts: 1,419

Re: contact problem with interface elements

The official release of staticstructural is still missing some features from nonlinearstatic. I'm my development tree, I have worked on addressing several of these issues, but it is not yet merged with oofem.org git   (and it's not quite done yet).
Now, if you don't need arc-length solvers, then there shouldn't be much missing from staticstructural. I'd say go ahead and use it.


The only means of contact in OOFEM right now is through cohesive zone elements. It won't work with large sliding, and contact zones need to be predefined.  This is regardless of the solver used.

  • Registered: 13-01-2017
  • Posts: 25

Re: contact problem with interface elements

Thanks for your reply, Mikael!

I should be finde with staticstructural then. I don't need large sliding, so the cohesive zone elements should work fine. Just for clearance, with cohesive zone elements you mean the interface elements in my case, not the XFEM elements, right?

  • From: Gothenburg, Sweden
  • Registered: 08-09-2009
  • Posts: 1,419

Re: contact problem with interface elements

Yes, the interface elements.