I'm trying to simulate as accurately as possible a hydraulic cylinder which is pushing against a plate. The cylinder is connected to the plate with steel tie rods that are restrained on the back side of the cylinder with nuts.  A feature on the cylinder body which is of particular interest is very close the the nut contact face.

I originally used a fixed rigid body with no penetration contact in place of the nuts to resist the force from the cylinder. The problem with the approach is that I get a stress singularity at the edge of the nut because it is too rigid so while the contacting face deflects the nut stays stationary so the corner closest to the cylinder barrel becomes almost a point contact.

I'm thinking the correct way to do this is the add the elastic support which is applied to the contact area but I'm unsure of the best way to apply this.  I'm thinking I should use total stiffness applying the stiffness of each tie rod to the tie rod nut area requiring an elastic constraint for each tie rod.  Does this sound correct?