Hi,
In a contact (surface-surface) analysis I'm monitoring the radial pressure at the interface. The problem that I'm having is that no matter how fine the mesh is (linear [always bonded] or non-linear), the element solution shows big jumps between adjacent elements. underneath the contact elements i'm using 10 node tetrahedral (SOLID187 in ANSYS) and the contact elements are 8 nodes elements (CONTA174 in ANSYS). I have learn that results from elements results which have great jumps can be erroneous, is there something that I should consider to reduce the jumps between elements results? Any suggestion or comments will be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your kind help.
P.S.: My model was validated by comparing the principal strains trend with results from the litterature.