Module 06: Explicit Dynamics Analysis Settings and Parameters

Introduction to ANSYS Explicit Dynamics

Release 17.0

2016 ANSYS, Inc.

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Module 06 Topics
1. Explicit Dynamics Analysis
Settings
2. Parameters and What-if Studies
3. Workshop 06.1: Can Crush with
Mass Scaling
4. Workshop 06.2: Drop Test of a
Bottle
5. Workshop 06.3: Prestressed
Beam
6. Workshop 06.4: Cylinder Impact
What-if Study

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Analysis Settings Preference

Note: If any Analysis Setting values are changed, then Type
will be set to Custom.

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Analysis Settings Preference

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Analysis Settings Preference

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Analysis Settings Preference

Note: The Body Self Contact and Element Self Contact settings in the Body Interactions object Details panel should be set
to Program Controlled in order for the Analysis Settings Preference Type to have an effect on the Body Interactions
objects. If the Program Controlled setting is used, the values of the Body Interactions settings will be as shown here.

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Step Controls
Solve Initiation

Resume From Cycle

Specifies the cycle (time step) from which to start the Solve.
Default (cycle 0) is to start at the beginning (time zero).
When resuming a simulation, changes to analysis settings will be respected where
possible.
For example, you often wish to resume with an extended End Time.
Changes to any other features in the model (geometry suppression, connections, loads, etc.) will not be respected.
List of cycles from which to resume will only be populated if a previous solve has been executed and restart files
generated.

Solve Termination

Maximum Number of Cycles

Specifies the maximum number of cycles (time increments) allowed for the simulation.
The simulation will stop once the specified value is reached.
Enter a large number (default) to ensure simulation runs to the End Time.

End Time (no default)

Defines the timescale that you want the simulation to run.

Enter a reasonable estimate for this parameter since it controls the length of time the simulation will take to run.
Used in other pre-processing objects (such as tabular loads) and also to define the scale for Chart output of results
objects.

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Step Controls
Maximum Energy Error
Solution stops if the energy error exceeds the Maximum Energy Error (expressed as a
fraction):
where
Reference Energy = Internal Energy + Kinetic Energy + Hourglass Energy
Current Energy = Internal Energy + Kinetic Energy + Hourglass Energy
Work Done = Work done by constraints
+ Work done by loads
+ Work done by body forces
+ Energy removed from system by element erosion
+ Work done by contact penalty forces

Reference Energy Cycle

Defines the cycle at which the solver calculates the reference energy
Usually the start cycle (default)

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Step Controls
Example energy conservation graph for model with symmetry plane and erosion

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Step Controls
Time Step Controls
Initial Time Step
If left on Program Controlled (recommended), the initial time
step will be automatically set to of the smallest initial
element stability time step.
Minimum Time Step
If the time drops below this value, the simulation will stop .
If left on Program Controlled (recommended), the value will be set to 1/10 of the Initial
Time Step.
Maximum Time Step
Solver will use the minimum of this value or the computed stability time step
Program Controlled is recommended
Time Step Safety Factor
Safety factor is applied to the computed stability time step
Default (0.9) should work for most simulations.
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Step Controls
Automatic Mass Scaling
Masses in smaller elements are scaled up to increase the time step used
in the simulation
Additional input is required for this option:
Minimum CFL Time Step
Minimum CFL time step to be obtain with mass scaling
Should be larger that the observed CFL time step

Maximum Element Scaling

Limits the ratio of scaled mass / physical mass that can be applied to each element in
the model.
If this ratio is exceeded, the simulation will stop with an error message.

Maximum Part Scaling

Limits the ratio of scaled mass / physical mass that can be applied to an individual body.
If this ratio is exceeded, the simulation will stop with an error message.

Update Frequency

The frequency (in cycles) that mass scaling is performed.

A value of zero (default) means mass scaling is only done once, at the start of the
simulation

Caution! Mass scaling introduces additional mass into the system to increase the
CFL time step. Introducing too much mass can lead to unphysical results.
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Step Controls
Automatic Mass Scaling Example

STANDARD TIMESTEP 2.0 X 10-5

MASS SCALING TIMESTEP 1.0 X 10-4

5X INCREASE IN DT,
0.02% INCREASE IN MASS

MASS SCALING SUMMARY IS IN THE PRINT FILE (.PRT)

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Step Controls
Virtual Topology and Mass Scaling
Using Virtual Topology for meshing can often improve mass scaling efficiency:

WITH VT
WITHOUT VT

Timestep
Mass
Scaling

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~ 5.0E-8 (No
Mass
Scaling)

2.0E-7

3.0E-7

4.0E-7

5.0E-7

6.0E-7

Without VT

0%

2.87%

7.84%

14.48%

21.54%

31.01%

With VT

0%

0.22%

0.90%

2.59%

5.51%

22.4%

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Step Controls
Virtual Topology and Mass Scaling
Solve Time Without VT and MS: 20 mins
Solve Time With VT and MS: 4 mins

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Solver Controls
Precision
Double Precision only
Solve Units
The units the solver will use for the simulation

For accuracy, only (mm, mg, ms) are allowed

Different units can be used to set up problems and view
results.

Beam Solution Type

Bending (default, most accurate)
Truss
Beam Time Step Safety Factor
Hex Integration Type
Exact (default, most accurate)
1pt Gauss (faster)
Shell Sublayers
Used to compute Stress Resultants and Bending Moments
Default (3) usually provides sufficient accuracy
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Solver Controls
Shell Shear Correction Factor
Shell BWC Warp Correction
Shell Thickness Update
Nodal
Elemental
Tet Pressure Integration
Average Nodal Pressure (ANP)
Constant Pressure (SCP)
Nodal Strain (NBS)
Shell Inertia Update
Recompute (default, most accurate)
Rotate (faster)
Density Update
Program Controlled (default, recommended)
Incremental (for large deformations)
Total (for small deformations)
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Solver Controls
Minimum Velocity
Computed nodal velocities below the Minimum
Velocity will be set zero
Eliminates small velocities caused by noise

Maximum Velocity
Computed nodal velocities above the Maximum
Velocity will be set equal to the Maximum Velocity
Can increase time step by eliminating high
velocities that are not influencing the required
solution

Radius Cutoff
Nodes with the Radius Cutoff of a symmetry plane
will be snapped onto the symmetry plane

Minimum Strain Rate Cutoff

The minimum strain rate you want to allow in the analysis.
The default is recommended for most analyses. For low speed or
quasi-static analyses, it may be necessary to decrease this value.
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Damping
Three types of damping can be applied for Explicit Dynamic Analyses:
Artificial Viscosity
Introduced to prohibit instabilities developing from shock formation / propagation
Hourglass Damping
Introduced to prohibit hourglass deformation modes developing in solid hex elements
and quad shell elements
Static Damping
Applied to allow a static equilibrium solution to be obtained from an Explicit Dynamic
analysis

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Damping: Artificial Viscosity

Shock discontinuities are generally not stable.
Usually, the diffusion inherent in numerical solutions is sufficient to keep
them stable, but solutions can be noisy.
Artificial Viscosity is used to
Ensure stability by smearing shock discontinuities into rapidly varying,
but continuous, transition regions
Reduce noise
Two terms are used to apply Artificial Viscosity:
Quadratic (stabilizes the solution)

V
V
V
C c for
C d

0
V
V
Linear (reduces noise)
V

for

V
0
V

where CQ is the Quadratic Artificial Viscosity coefficient and CL is the

Linear Artificial Viscosity coefficient
Both terms impose further restrictions on the time step
Not usually very significant
Default Values are recommended
Use carefully to avoid over-diffusion of the real solution
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Damping: Artificial Viscosity

QUADRATIC VISCOSITY ENSURES STABILITY

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LINEAR VISCOSITY REDUCES NOISE

Damping: Hourglass Control

Hourglass Control (Damping) for Hexahedral Solid and Quad Shell Elements
For the hexahedral and quad element formulations, the expressions for strain rates and forces involve only

differences in velocities and/or coordinates of diagonally opposite corners of the element.

If an element distorts such that these differences remain unchanged, there is no strain increase in the element and
therefore no resistance to this distortion.
On the left, the two diagonals remain the same length even though the element distorts. If such distortions occur in a
region of several elements, a pattern such as that shown on the right occurs and the reason for the name hourglass
instability is easily understood:

2D

In order to avoid such hourglass instabilities, a set of corrective forces are added to the solution.
Two formulations are available for hexahedral solid elements:
AD standard (default)
Most efficient option in terms of memory and speed
Flanagan-Belytschko
Invariant under rotation. Improved results for large rigid body rotations

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3D

Damping: Hourglass Control

Two formulations are available for the corrective forces used to resist
hourglass deformation modes of hexahedral elements.
AUTODYN Standard (default, most efficient)
Generates hourglass forces proportional to nodal velocity differences.
Often referred to as a viscous formulation.

FH C H cV

* f KF X

where FH is a vector of the hourglass forces at each node of the element,

CH is the Viscous Coefficient, is the material density, c is the material
sound speed, V is the material volume and fKF() is a vector function of element
nodal velocities aligned with the hourglass shape vector.

Flanagan Belytschko

Invariant under rigid body rotation (i.e., hourglass forces sum to zero)
Recommended for simulations in which large rotations of hexahedral elements
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are expected.
F C cV 3 * f X
H

FB

Vector function of element nodal velocities is orthogonal to both linear velocity

field and rigid body field.

Viscous Coefficient usually varies between 0.05 and 0.15. The default value is 0.1.
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Damping: Hourglass Control

The sum of the hourglass forces applied to an element is normally zero.
Momentum of the system is unaffected by hourglass forces.

Energy associated with hourglass forces is

stored locally in the specific internal energy of the element
recorded globally over the entire model

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Damping: Static
Explicit Dynamics is primarily designed for solving transient dynamic events.
Using the static damping option, a static equilibrium solution can also be
obtained.
Introduces a damping force proportional to the nodal velocities, aimed to critically damp the
lowest mode of oscillation of the static system.
Solution is computed dynamically until it converges to an equilibrium state.
Need to judge when the equilibrium state is achieved.
Value of Static Damping (Rd) for critical damping of the lowest mode of vibration is:
Rd

2 t T
1 2 t T

where T is the period of the lowest mode of vibration of the system (or close approximation).
Expect solution to converge to static equilibrium in roughly 3T if critical damping is applied.
If T is not known accurately, over-estimate it rather than underestimate it.
Approximate values of t and T can be obtained by first performing a dynamic analysis
without static damping.
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Bulk Viscosity for Shell Elements

Used to correct the behavior of shells after long elapsed simulation time
Explicit Dynamics System: Analysis Settings > Damping Controls
Autodyn GUI: Controls > Damping
Fixed support, uniform pressure loading example:

STABLE RESULTS WITH BULK VISCOSITY

R15

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R16

Erosion Controls
Erosion is a numerical mechanism for the automatic removal (deletion) of
elements during a simulation.

Removes very distorted elements before they become inverted (degenerate).

Ensures time step remains reasonably large.
Ensures solutions can continue to the End Time.
Can be used to allow simulation of material fracture, cutting, and penetration.

There are three options available to initiate erosion of elements:

On Geometric Strain
An element erodes when its Effective (geometric) strain exceeds the Geometric
Strain Limit.
Typical values range from 0.5 to 2.0. The default value of 1.5 can be used in most cases.

Effective strain is calculated from the principal strain components as:

eff

2
2
2
2

12 22 32 1 2 2 3 3 1 3 12
23
31
3

Custom result EFF_STN can be used to review effective strain.

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DEFAULTS

Erosion Controls
Three Options (Continued)

On Material Failure
An element erodes immediately upon material failure.
Elements using damage models will erode if the damage value reaches 1.0.

On Minimum Element Time Step

An element erodes when its local element time step, multiplied by the time
step safety factor falls below the Minimum Element Time Step.
Custom result TIMESTEP can be used to review local element time steps.

Erosion options can be used in any combination.

Elements will erode if any of the criteria are met.

Retain Inertia of Eroded Material

If this option is selected, and all elements connected to a node in the mesh erode,

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the inertia of the resulting free node is retained. i.e. the free node continues to
transfer momentum in subsequent impacts.
If not selected, all free nodes are removed from the simulation.

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DEFAULTS

Erosion Controls
Erosion Examples

PENETRATION OF MULTI-LAYERED TARGET

DAMAGE PLOTS FOR GLASS TARGETS
NEVER USE ONLY THE ERODED REGIONS SHOWN IN MATERIAL PLOTS TO
DETERMINE THE EXTENT OF DAMAGE.

ALWAYS USE FAILURE/DAMAGE PLOTS TO SEE THE FULL EXTENT OF THE

DAMAGE (PARTICULARLY WHEN COMPARING RESULTS WITH EXPERIMENTS).

BIRD STRIKE
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Output Controls

DEFAULTS

Results files
Results files contain data used for the main post-processing
operations in Explicit Dynamics (Contour Results, Probe Results, ).
Save Results on
Equally Spaced Time Points (specify Number of points)
Cycles (specify Cycles frequency)
Time (specify Time frequency)
By default, 20 results files are generated for a Solve which
terminates at the specified End Time.

Restart files
Restart files contain all information required by the solver to run (or restart) the simulation.
Save Restart Files on

Equally Spaced Time Points (specify Number of points)

Cycles (specify Cycles frequency)
Time (specify Time frequency)
By default, 5 restart files are generated for a Solve which terminates at the specified End Time.

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Output Controls
Result Tracker data
Result Tracker files contains time history data for probes
Save Result Tracker Data on

Cycles (specify Cycles frequency)

Time (specify Time frequency)
By default result tracker data is recorded every cycle.
Frequency may need to be reduced for long running simulations.

Output Contact Forces

Output contact forces for ACT to calculate contact related
properties such as contact pressure
Output Contact Forces on
Cycles (specify Cycles frequency)
Time (specify Time frequency)
Equally Spaced Points (specify Number of points)
Off (do not output contact forces)
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DEFAULTS

Recommendations for Drop Test Simulations

To improve speed
Turn off element self interaction (probably not required)
Turn off Part self interaction (if possible)
Turn on 1 point Gauss Hex
Use mass scaling (for overly small elements)
Use the SCP Tet (much faster, but less accurate)

To improve accuracy
Change/Increase Hourglass Damping
Use Friction Force

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Run HPC on a Multi-Core Machine

To Run HPC in Explicit Dynamics system, make sure

Platform MPI is installed on the machine

Double Precision is used
Body Interaction is scoped to all bodies
Body Self Contact and Element Self Contact are set to Program Controlled

Click on Tools > Solver Process Settings > Advanced and:

Check the box Distribute Solution
Set the Max number of utilized processors to the number of slave tasks you want to use
You can also use Add Local to create local solve process settings for HPC runs

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Run HPC on Networked Multi-Core Machines

In additional to the set up on the previous slide, a command line argument
needs to be added to the settings, such as
-machines hostid1:n1:hostid2:n2:hostidnn:nn
The hostid could be machine name or its IP address
n1, n2, , nn are the number of slave tasks on each machine

The total number of slave tasks on all machines should be equal to the number
in the Max number of utilized processors.

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HPC Performance Example 1

Many performance tests have been conducted
3 examples shown here highlighting the range of latest parallel capabilities
Note speedup is dependent on a number of model factors including model size, solver and
coupling, result edits, and PC and/or CPU configuration

Example 1: Test Vessel Drop

812,468 Elements (ANP Tetrhedra,
Hexahedra and Shells)
Bonds & TC (no Erosion)

Number of Cores/CPUs
Solver Time (minutes)
Speedup
Efficiency (%)

1
42.37
1

2
21.06
2.01
100.6%

4
12.21
3.47
86.8%

8
6.62
6.4
80.0%

Vessel Drop Speedup

8
6
4
2
0
1

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HPC Performance Examples 2 and 3

Example 2: Pull Test Failure
NBS Tetrahedral elements
Limited Erosion and TC

Pull Test Speedup

6
5
4
3

Number of Cores/CPUs
Run Time (minutes)
Speedup
Efficiency (%)

1
291.30
1

2
174.68
1.67
83.5%

4
91.36
3.19
79.7%

8
52.77
5.52
69.0%

2
1
0
1

Example 3: Impact Penetration

680,000 Elements (mostly Hexahedra,

Impact Penetration Speedup

some ANP Tetrahedra)

Significant Erosion and TC

6
5
4
3

Number of Cores/CPUs
Solver Time (minutes)
Speedup
Efficiency (%)

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1
176.40
1

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2
125.60
1.4
70.2%

4
77.60
2.27
56.8%

8
42.60
4.14
51.8%

12
35.80
4.93
41.1%

2
1
0
1

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MPI Support at R16.0 and Forward

Platform MPI: Supported since R12.0
Intel MPI
Better performance on Intel architecture-based clusters

Microsoft MPI
Better performance on Windows operating systems
Able to run Autodyn on a Windows cluster with MS MPI or Job Scheduler

AutodynWrapper.exe is available for users convenience to switch Autodyn

HPC runs between different MPIs.
AutodynWrapper.exe
AutodynWrapper.exe
AutodynWrapper.exe

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mpi pcmpi
mpi intel
mpi msmpi

[Platform MPI]
[Intel MPI]
[Microsoft MPI]

MPI Performance Comparison

Intel Xeon Dual-Core CPU @ 2.90 GHz, 256 GB RAM, Windows Server 2008 R2
Enterprise

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What-if Studies
Parameters and Design Points allow you set up and run
what-if studies:
INPUT PARAMETER

OUPUT PARAMETER

DOUBLE CLICK TO OPEN OUTLINE OF

ALL PARAMETERS WINDOW
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What-if Studies

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What-if Studies
Parameters can be set in multiple applications:

ENGINEERING DATA

DESIGNMODELER

RADIUS

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MECHANICAL

What-if Studies
Progress can be monitored during solution:

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What-if Studies
Results can be charted:

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What-if Studies
Design Point can be Exported to automatically create and save a full analysis
project for the Solve associated with that Design Point:

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Workshop 06.1: Can Crush with Mass Scaling

Goal:
Add mass scaling to the previous
aluminum soda can crushing simulation

Procedure:
Duplicate the existing Explicit Dynamics

(ANSYS) Analysis System

Review the results from the prior run
without mass scaling
Identify elements that are reducing the
time increment size
Turn on mass scaling and re-solve the
simulation
Compare the settings and results from the
two simulations

PEAK MASS ADDITION

Walkthrough
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Workshop 06.2: Drop Test of a Bottle

Goal:
Use ANSYS Mechanical to simulate the
drop test of a variable-thickness bottle

Procedure:
Use an External Data Component System
to import variable thickness for the bottle
Link to Explicit Dynamics to set up and
solve the analysis, using mass scaling to
increase efficiency

Quick Instructions
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Workshop 06.3: Prestressed Beam

Goal:
Pre-stress a cantilever beam using Explicit
Dynamics

Procedure:
Import the beam geometry
Start Mechanical
Mesh the geometry
Apply appropriate initial conditions
Apply appropriate static damping
Solve the problem
View the results

Quick Instructions
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Workshop 06.4: Cylinder Impact What-if Study

VZ = -100 M/SEC

Goal:
Conduct what-if study on previously solved
cylinder impact model by tracking maximum
equivalent plastic strain as a function of initial
rod velocity

VZ = -300 M/SEC

Procedure:
Duplicate the existing Explicit Dynamics

(ANSYS) Analysis System

Assign a parameter to the initial velocity
condition of the rod
Assign a parameter to the maximum equivalent
plastic strain
Run the parameterized system from the Project
Schematic
Review the results (equivalent plastic strain
plots are shown here)

VZ = -500 M/SEC

Walkthrough
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Module 06: Explicit Dynamics Analysis Settings and Parameters

END

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