Now in SOLIDWORKS Simulation 2023, you can adjust the penalty stiffness control for the contacts by going to your static analysis study properties and adjusting the slider. If you leave the slider set to the default, the contact behaves like previous releases of SOLIDWORKS Simulation, but the stiffness can be reduced to make your contact problems faster.

We tested some common contacts to see how much of a difference having penalty stiffness control would make. The contact pressures for spherical, cylindrical, and flat surface looked very similar between the high stiffness and low stiffness simulation studies. Displacement results showed a clearer difference between the three simulation models. The flat geometry made of steel has a stiffness that rivals the lower contact stiffness, so we see more deviation in the results because of this.

It's exciting to see the huge savings on static assembly analysis in SOLIDWORKS Simulation 2023. Looking at solve times, we noticed a large difference. When using the lowest stiffness our simulation was about 3x faster! The time savings with SOLIDWORKS Simulation 2023 and the new penalty stiffness control for contacts helps to run quick design iterations on assemblies.

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SOLIDWORKS 2023
SOLIDWORKS Simulation