Description: Contact pressure output (CPRESS) and contact shear stress output CSHEAR1 and CSHEAR2 to the output database (.odb) file have been made more accurate and less noisy for second-order surfaces. The improvements tend to be most noticeable in regions with significant variation of contact stress over individual surface facets, which commonly occurs near the perimeter of an active contact region. Figure 13–14 and Figure 13–15 show two examples involving quadratic tetrahedral elements (element type C3D10) in which contact pressure noise has been reduced across versions. Of course, adequate mesh refinement remains necessary for accurate predictions with finite element methods. As in previous releases, contact stress accuracy is generally more accurate with the surface-to-surface contact formulation than with the node-to-surface contact formulation. Results are not affected by this enhancement for the following surface types: surfaces based on linear element types, surfaces based on modified tetrahedral or triangular elements, and node-based surfaces.