Can I model frictional contacts in SimScale FEA?

Yes,

Including friction in your simulation is important when friction effects among contacting surfaces are expected to be crucial.

Friction can added to any physical contact. Physical contacts imply that we are already in a non-linear analysis scheme.

First activate the non-linear analysis toggle

Then ensure that there is at least one physical contact defined and set Friction behavior to Coulomb

Friction is enabled, and you can now edit the friction coefficient through the specific physical contact settings.

Including friction in your simulation might lead to higher computational times as frictional behavior is highly non-linear. If friction effects are not expected to significantly affect the required results it is advised to suppress them by using a non-frictional contact. This will be more efficient as it will yield results faster.

Thanks,
Ioannis

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