When friction is enabled in contact treatment using static or dynamic fricition coefficients (FS, FD in *CONTACT), the energy dissipated due to friction can be recorded and visualized. The parameter that tells LS-DYNA to ouput the frictional energy is FRCENG in *CONTROL_CONTACT. FRCENG by default is set to 0 to ignore the recording and output of the frictional energy. When FRCENG is set to 1, LS-DYNA outputs the frictional energy as “Surface Energy Density” into a binary database name “INTerface FORce” (INTFOR) file. The INTFOR file is not output by default and hence to request the output, you must use the keyword *DATABASE_BINARY_INTFOR with a frequency of output time (DT) AND provide a command line argument “s=Intforc_file_name”. Upon completion of the simulation, you can read the INTFOR file using LS-PrePost using File/Open/Interface Force File option and use FCOMP button to fringe the frictionaly energy.

If you are perfoming a coupled thermal-mechanical analysis using the option SOLN =2 in *CONTROL_SOLUTION, then this frictional energy can be converted to heat energy to be included by the thermal solver.

Summary of the steps to output and view frictionaly energy are included here.

1. Set FRCENG = 1i n Card 4 of *CONTROL_CONTACT
2. Use *DATABASE_BINARY_INTFOR with desired output time interval DT
3. Use “s=intforce_file_name” as one of the command line arguments when invoking LS-DYNA
4. View the results in LS-PrePost/File/Open/Interface Force File and FCOMP/SurfaceEnergyDensity to contour the results