Hi @samuelshannons!
First of all there is no automatic contact detection on SimScale yet. If you think that this is a useful feature that needs to be implemented, you can leave your request here.
In general, you can set your penalty coefficient to a very high number that may evoke some other difficulties. Some difficulties are mentioned in the posts given below.
Concerning your question there are several options to define a contact that are explained in this post including the ratio between the penalty coefficient and the material(s) you are using: Contact Solution - Calculix vs. Code_Aster
Some other useful resources are:
Let me know if that was helpful.
Happy SimScaling!
Jousef