Self-contact in rubber/foam components: jounce bumper

Components that deform and change their shape substantially can fold and have different parts of the surface come into contact with each other. In such cases it can be difficult to predict at the outset of the analysis where such contact may occur and, therefore, it can be difficult to define two independent surfaces to make up a contact pair.
A jounce bumper, sometimes referred to as a helper spring, is a highly compressible component that is used as part of the shock isolation system in a vehicle. It is typically located above the coil spring that connects the wheels to the frame. Microcellular material is used because of its high compressibility and low Poisson's ratio value at all but fully compressed configurations.
The bumper initially sits against a fixed flat rigid surface on one end; on the other end, another flat rigid surface is used to model the compression of the bumper. The geometry of the bumper is such that it folds in three different locations. Separate surfaces are defined at the locations where self-contact is expected. This modeling technique produces an economical analysis because the scope of contact searches is limited.

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