Selecting the contact and target sides in ANSYS

There is an excellent video by ANSYS on designating the contact and target sides properly. This article is a written summary of the contents of the video for easy reference.

• Contact and Target surfaces are defined so bodies can interact

• Contact detection points (nodes or integration points) cannot pass through the target face as shown below:

• The body with the finer mesh should be selected as the contact.
• The convex shape should be the contact side.
• The flat or concave shape should be the target side.
• Softer material should be the contact side. This ensures that even with the deformed shape the nodes on the contact will not penetrate the target face.

• When contact and target sides are not easily distinguished, or both surfaces have coarse meshes, use symmetric contact behavior.
• Contact results are only available on the contact side – For symmetric contact, contact results are the average of the contact and target side results.