Convergence issues in Silicon-Glass adhesion simulation with curved surfaces

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Hi everyone, I am working on a model to evaluate the load required to make a 2 mm thick silicon tile adhere to a glass substrate.

Setup Description: - Geometry: The glass substrate has a cylindrical curvature with a radius of 40 m (nearly flat) on its top surface (in contact with the tile), and a base of 32 mm x 12 mm and 3 mm thickness. The silicon tile (30x10x2) mm^3 is positioned so that it is initially tangent to the substrate at a single point.

- Boundary Conditions The flat bottom of the glass substrate has Fixed constraint. I applied a Prescribed Displacement (w) to the bottom surface of the Silicon tile to "push" it against the glass. I defined w = w_{gap} = -y^2/(2R) to follow the parabolic profile of the gap. I defined a Contact Pair between the bottom of the silicon and the top of the glass. I enabled the Adhesion feature with a gap activation criteria delta = 10^{-7}m. I even tried with " Always Active"

- Mesh: I am using 0.6 mm tetrahedral elements and 0.2-0.3 mm elements on the glass/Si interface.

- Solver: I am using a Direct Solver with default parameters.

I am struggling with two main issues: the simulation fails to converge as the the tile approaches full contact. Even when it partially solves, the adhesion condition doesn't seem to activate across the entire contact surface.I've checked the gap variables: the difference between my analytical w_{gap} and the built-in initgap_src_p1 is negligible (within 0–2 nm), so the geometry seems correct.Could this be a mesh refinement issue in the contact zone?Is the Penalty Method for adhesion sensitive to the relationship between the prescribed displacement and the contact offset?Should I be using a Boundary Method or a specific step-by-step loading (e.g., an Auxiliary Sweep) instead of a direct prescribed displacement to improve stability?Any advice on how to achieve stable convergence for this type of thin-plate bending and adhesion would be greatly appreciated.



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