How to create surface contact in nastran?

Question

How to create surface contact in nastran?

Answer 1

If you have access to Abaqus (commercial FEM software), you don't even need gap elements. The contact conditions are satisfied by using either lagrange multipliers or penalty method. There are several good books on this issue if you want to create your own code in Matlab or Mathematica.

Here is the link to the books on my webpage:

serdarselamets.weebly.com/books.html

Good Luck!

Answer 2

Use gap elements (CGAP/PGAP) run a nonlinear solution.  There is an iterative technique that uses a linear solution (SOL101).  Look up PGAP in your QRG.