An Efficient Computational Approach for Frictional Analysis in ABAQUS

FEA contact modeling with severe interfacial friction is often associated with computational challenges to obtain converged solutions. The challenges may increase for problems with significant non-linear deformation (e.g., hyperelastic materials) and more sophisticated laws of coefficients of frictions (COF). Thus, objectives of the present paper are to propose an efficient FEA-based approach to model frictional behavior and demonstrate its implementation in ABAQUS. Major idea of the proposed approach is based on an iterative process where several contact frictionless problems are considered instead of an initial frictional model. Frictional behavior is modeled for each iteration in form of given boundary conditions (BC) at the interface. Here, the BCs are calculated using corresponding FEA predictions obtained at previous iteration according to known constitutive law of COF. The iterative process continues until desired accuracy is satisfied. Implementation of the approach in ABAQUS is considered in detail. Extremely robust nature of the approach is computationally illustrated on several simple representative examples. Validation with available exact analytical solutions is presented and high accuracy of FEA predictions is emphasized.