Simulation Contact

Oleksandr Grinenko

21 Jul, 2025 11:57 AM

Hello people,

In this tutorial - contact simulation in FreeCAD FEM Workbench.

Mechanical boundary conditions:

Plate fully constrained from both sides.
Contact between cylinder & plate:
Stiffness=70 GPa/m
mu_friction=0.3
sigma_P=50 MPa on cylinder face.

Material:
Steel C45 plate
Aluminium zylinder

Link to the video with descriptions here:
https://vimeo.com/1103103030

1. Step 1: Simulation details

   Basic steps carried out in this demo are:

   
   

   1) Create Assembly ( here they were created earlier)

   
   

   2) Select part workbench and make compound from assembly

   
   

   3) Select FEM Workbench and create Analysis container

   
   

   4) Apply materials to both solids

   
   

   5) Apply fixed constraint to plate faces

   
   

   6) Set up contact boundary condition

   
   

   6.1)Define master & slave faces

   6.2) Define stiffness and friction parameters 

   
   

   7) Apply load/ pressure

   
   

   8) FEM Mesh from shape from Gmsh (2nd Order, select max element size)

   
   

   6) Select under Mechanical analysis type: static

   
   

   7) Write .inp Files und Run Solver 

   
   

   7) View Results: Von Mises Stress, etc.

   
   

   Thanx!