Contact options

The Contact options tab holds numerical settings for the contact search. They do not describe the physics of the interface; they control how the calculation decides which surfaces are in contact and when to be cautious.

Field	Choices	Meaning
Write contact option	Yes, No	Whether these options are used at all
Clearance		The gap within which surfaces are treated as in contact
Check displacement/distance	Yes, No	Enable the two checks below
Check Disp		Displacement limit for the check
Check Dist		Distance limit for the check
Reduction	yes, no	Reduce the contact contribution

Setting Write contact option to No leaves the remaining fields unused, so an interaction that needs no special handling can ignore this tab entirely.

Validation

A clearance is required when contact options are written, and both Check Disp and Check Dist are required when the displacement/distance check is activated. Pressing Apply & Save with one missing shows a warning naming the problem.

See Contact options in the numgeo reference manual.