A Note on Beam-to-Beam Contact Dynamics

Two approaches for beam-to-beam contact modeling are considered in the paper. The first is the classic continuum approach with point-to-point contact discretization. The other is the coarsegrained approach where the physical intermolecular fields are applied for the modeling of interaction of continuous bodies. To describe the contact, the repulsive steric potential is utilized here. The advantages and disadvantages of both approaches are discussed, and the results are compared with those obtained in Abaqus. An involved computational simulation of multiple collisions between elastic beams is considered as a numerical example.