Normal contact stiffness

[Alexei Zhurov]

Dear colleagues,

I am dealing with bone-implant static contact interaction. My question
is related
to normal contact stiffness, which is the coefficient of proportionality
between
the force (or stress) applied and the resulting displacement. On the one
hand,
normal contact stiffness is input (theoretical or empirical) data for
the particular
contact. On the other hand, in FE software such as ANSYS, it is a
parameter to
play with to achieve more rapid convergence and better accuracy in the
contact
analysis. I cannot resolve this contradiction. Could you help me please.
Is there
any reason to fix the value of the normal contact stiffness in FE
software?

Thanks in advance. Kind regards,

Alex
--------
Alexei Zhurov
Biomechanics Research Unit, UWCM
27 Cardiff Medicentre, Heath Park, Cardiff CF14 4UJ, UK
Tel.: +44 029 2068 2162 Fax: +44 029 2068 2161

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