Dear Nour,

You can use general contact.

Thanks Salar Rasti, I tried general contact but it is causing zero displacement solution at the first iteration of riks step although I checked the boundary conditions. The same thing applies for surface to surface interaction. Any suggestion?

Dear Nour,

You can select "embedded constraints" which is generally used in ABAQUS for modelling composite structural elements.

You can use constraints similar to elastic supports.

You can use constraints similar to elastic supports.

Thanks, Sushant Gupta

I tried your suggestion, however it creates an error due to the lack of interaction between the host and slave. The saddles are are only connected to some parts of the concrete beam surface, so the other surfaces cannot be constrained to the saddles.

This constraint works very well for the internal reinforcement.