Contact Action

Description

ContactAction is a MOOSE action that constructs objects needed for mechanical contact enforcement. This is invoked by including the Contact block at the top level in a MOOSE input file. See the page documenting the syntax for that block for a description, example usage, and parameters.

For node-to-segment mechanical contact, the action offers the possibility to automatically set up mechanical contact pairs given a maximum distance between contacting boundary centroids. To use that option, the user must set automatic_pairing_method = CENTROID. The user can leverage this capability by providing automatic_pairing_distance and automatic_pairing_boundaries. This is particularly useful when many feasible contact interactions can take place in a periodically repeating pattern.

Alternatively, also for node-to-segment, the user can choose to select a computation of proximity based on nodal locations. In essence, for all boundaries provided by the user in automatic_pairing_boundaries, the action will search for all nodes whose distance is less than automatic_pairing_distance. If so, each nodal pair distance from different boundaries less than the automatic_pairing_distance distance will create a contact pair. Repeated contact pairs are automatically eliminated. In order to activate this feature, in addition to automatic_pairing_boundaries and automatic_pairing_distance, the user needs to set the input parameter automatic_pairing_method = NODE.