Simulate contact between beams elements

[tcgg]

Hi to everyone,
i need to simulate the behavior of an wire rope using beam element instead of brick.

For achieve this i created seven helices of beams, one for each wire. Now i need to insert contact between beams.

Other fea programs have some 1D elements for simulate the contact between two point. For example Strand7 has the element called: "Point-contact".

There is something similar on Abaqus?

 

[cooken]

In Abaqus the preferred method is to define an "interaction" between bodies that are intended to contact each other. If you are using the latest versions of Abaqus (6.13 or 6.14) then general contact would work the best in your case, as they include some additional features that should improve the solution. I strongly recommend reading the documentation: Abaqus Analysis User's Guide - Interactions.