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Abaqus/Standard: Contact between 3D Beam and Membrane

Abaqus/Standard: Contact between 3D Beam and Membrane

Abaqus/Standard: Contact between 3D Beam and Membrane

(OP)
Hello everybody,

I'm pretty new to Abaqus, so if there are some basic mistakes in what I did, please let me know. I'm trying to simulate the following system: I have two parabolic-shaped rods that are connected at the tips, forming a bi-convex lense. The area between the rods is filled with a membrane of the same shape, but which is cut off at the top and bottom a little bit (so that the total height of the membrane is 9/10 of the height of the rod-lense). Now, I want to prestress the membrane by putting a compression force on the rods, such that the tips move towards each other. The membrane restrains this movement.

The two rods are connected with two pin-constraints at the top and bottom of the lense. The whole system is fixed at the bottom and there is one force at the top compressing the lense (c.f. attached drawing; this is an example configuration in 2D - additional degrees of freedom were deactivated for 3D-simulation). I used to tie-constrain the membrane to the rods, which worked pretty well and gave me accurate results. What I'm trying to do now is to establish a connection between the membrane and the rods, such that the membrane can move in tangential direction of the rods (frictionless first, later probably with friction), but cannot move in normal direction (imagine the rods being in membrane-'pockets').

I use 3D membrane and beam elements and tried to establish a surface-to-surface contact interaction. That didn't work because the edge of my membrane is apparently not an appropriate surface ('Surface ... is not continuous or it is composed of two or more regions joined at discrete nodes. [...]').

Does anybody has an idea of how to model this? Please let me know if you need more information.

Thanks a lot in advance!

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