VERIFICATION OF CONTACT MODELING WITH COMSOL MULTIPHYSICS SOFTWARE

Fabienne Pennec (1) , Hikmat Achkar (2) , David Peyrou (2) , Robert Plana (1) , Patrick Pons (1) , Fréderic Courtade (3)

1 LAAS-MINC - Équipe MIcro et Nanosystèmes pour les Communications sans fil
2 LAAS-TEAM - Service Techniques et Équipements Appliqués à la Microélectronique
3 CNES - Centre National d'Études Spatiales [Toulouse]

Contact analysis is of major concern in a lot of applications and addresses often multi-field effects (thermal, electromagnetic effects...). Due to the nonlinearity and difficulty in predicting the behaviour of bodies coming into and go out of contact, the need of software able to simulate a structural contact problem and couple it with other physics is a major stake. The last version 3.3 of COMSOL Multiphysics allows the analysis of multiphysics contact problem and appears attractive. Being new and under development, COMSOL 3.3 needs therefore to be validated in terms of contact modelling. Only the cases of frictionless problem are taken into account. A static contact Hertz model and a model containing a rigid-flexible contact and a flexible-flexible contact are studied and describe the capabilities, advantages, originalities and drawbacks of COMSOL 3.3. A good user interface and the capabilities to couple all physics with facilities make attractive the software. However, contact algorithm implemented in COMSOL doesn't allow the resolution of all contact problems. The more evident problem, like for example the case of a solid compressed on a rigid surface (contact of Hertz) can be solved efficiently with a reduced computational time. A problem that contains an initial gap between two deformable surfaces requires more computational costs and solver fails to find a solution easily. The user has to spend enough time to set up the contact parameters. But it isn't always evident to check these parameters to optimise the accuracy of the solution and the time of resolution. More investments have to be provided to improve the contact algorithms in Comsol and to facilitate the user to choose the contact parameters.

Mots clés: nonlinearity; Augmented Lagrangian method; mechanical contact; penalty factor; Hertz contact; multiphysic simulation; COMSOL

Domaines: Micro et nanotechnologies/Microélectronique

Fabienne Pennec, Hikmat Achkar, David Peyrou, Robert Plana, Patrick Pons, et al.. VERIFICATION OF CONTACT MODELING WITH COMSOL MULTIPHYSICS SOFTWARE. 2007. ⟨hal-00180257⟩