Hi everyone,

I am running an Explicit Dynamic Analysis in Abaqus, where a discrete rigid body is attached to a deformable body that acts as a support. The rigid body is impacted by a force, and I want to study the reaction forces on the deformable body.

I have tried the following approaches:

1. Tie Constraint – However, no reaction forces were recorded on the deformable body.
2. Surface-to-Surface Contact (Hard contact, without penalty) – This also resulted in no force transfer.

Some details of my setup:

• The rigid body is encastré (fully fixed) at its reference point (RP).
• The rigid body has tri-elements, and the deformable body has tet-elements.
• The deformable body is fully constrained at its base to measure reaction forces.

When I only use General Contact, it seems that forces are transmitting and shown on the deformable, but I doubt that it is correct, and needs to get some advice. What is the correct way to model the interaction so that forces are properly transferred to the deformable body? Should I modify the contact properties, boundary conditions, or solver settings? Any guidance would be appreciated!