Defining Contacts in 2D plane

[jongyonkim]

Hi,

I'm running ABAQUS/Explicit.

My structure is basically a 2D circle (solid, homogenous, element cps4r) with two "1D line" arms (beam, element B21)coiling around the circle (like an eye of a hurricane).

I would like to define a "Rough" Interaction Property (No slip) contact between the arms and the circle. I want to avoid creating "contact pairs" as much as possible, because the contact behavior is the same throughout the model. Creating contact pairs for my structure would not only take a long time to do but it would also slow down my computation.

So I tried using "General Contact (Explicit)" All* with Self, but it gave me an error:
*CONTACT cannot be defined on 2D element facets. If the model contains 2D or axisymmetric elements, then *CONTACT INCLUSIONS, ALL ELEMENT BASED cannot be specified, and the first surface name on each data line under *CONTACT INCLUSIONS or *CONTACT EXCLUSIONS must not be blank.

I also tried using "Self Contact (Explicit)", but it gave me an error:
Contact pair references surface/node-based surface/analytical rigid surface assembly__pickedsurf199 but this surface/node-based surface/analytical rigid surface cannot be used with *contact pair. Check previous warning messages for this surface to find the cause.
Contact pair references surface/node-based surface/analytical rigid surface but this surface/node-based surface/analytical rigid surface has not been defined or this surface is defined on the collapsed faces
Element type cps4r is incompatible with other element types in this surface definition. This surface cannot be used with *contact pair.

The only option left is "Surface-to-Surface Contact (Explicit)", but I would not want to do this, because I would otherwise have to define 30+ surfaces due to the coiling structure...

What is the best way to define contact with this structure?

Thanks.