Working with Parts-Based Interfaces in Reports

You can report results for parts-based interfaces -- the areas where the surfaces of parts come into contact with each other, or the remainders of those surfaces. Using parts-based interfaces improves performance for simulations that have many parts.

You can report on parts-based interfaces in one of two ways:

  • Accessing the whole interface boundaries (the complete intersected portion of the original parent boundaries)
  • Accessing individually the intersected and remaining portions of part surfaces in the contacts of the interface
To access a whole interface boundary (using the object selector), select the respective interface boundary for the associated region in the Regions node. This functionality works the same as for boundary-based interfaces.

To access the intersected and remaining portions of part surfaces that are in contact, expand the nodes of the intersected parent part surfaces and select the desired subsurfaces. A subsurface exists for: (a) each contact in which the parent part surface participates, and (b) the remaining portion of the parent part surface that is not intersected.

Example of Reporting on Parts-Based Interfaces

This example uses the intersection of two blocks to illustrate how you can report on contacts between surfaces. One block has surfaces A and B, the other has surfaces C and D. Each part surface participates in two contacts (one with each of the two part surfaces on the other side), yielding four contacts in the interface: A/C, A/D, B/C, B/D.

Three separate reports are defined, each with the Area Magnitude field function, and with the following respective selected parts:

  1. Selection of aggregate Part Surfaces A and B and all of their part subsurfaces (areas of contact and remainders):

    The report Sum 1 computes the results on the aggregate part surfaces as the accumulation of the results from their subsurfaces.



  2. Selection of only aggregate Part Surfaces A and B:

    The report Sum 2 computes the results on the aggregate part surfaces even if none of their subsurfaces are explicitly selected.



  3. Selection of the following:
    1. The interface boundary CBI [0], on the side of the interface that is part of the region Block
    2. All four contact surfaces.


    The report Sum 3 computes results for the interface boundary CBI [0] that are consistent with the results from the four corresponding contact surfaces:

    0.595 = 0.2 + 0.24375 + 0.15 + 0.00125.