Dear SIMULA Community,

I’m a novice and would like to ask for your advice. I’m working with ABAQUS/Explicit (CAE) on the contact behavior and momentum transfer between two bodies. Those bodies are getting in and out of contact multiple times in a row. The contact time is irregular, which causes some problems.

I would like to partition the whole simulation time by steps (Dynamic,Explicit) to increase the resolution of Field- and History Output during contact and to enable restart points. Is it possible to automatically start and stop predefined steps based on the contact situation? It seams like CAE only allows the user to define a time period, not a start condition.

Currently I’m using a simple model to estimate the contact phase. Afterwards I readjust the time period of each step manually, which is too time consuming for an extensive parameter study.

Thank you in advance.

Abaqus ​​​​​​​