Contact Action

Description

ContactAction is a MOOSE action that constructs objects needed for mechanical contact enforcement. This is invoked by including the Contact block at the top level in a MOOSE input file. See the page documenting the syntax for that block for a description, example usage, and parameters.

For node-to-segment mechanical contact, the action offers the possibility to automatically set up mechanical contact pairs given a maximum distance between contacting boundary centroids. The user can leverage this capability by providing automatic_pairing_distance and automatic_pairing_boundaries. This is particularly useful when many feasible contact interactions can take place in a periodically repeating pattern.