In these days, a finite element model consists of several INCLUDE files either relative or absolute. When collaborating with other people, it is very difficult to remember sending the included files and also if we do remember, it is cumbersome if not difficult to find them and zip them as one file. I recently encountered…

Here are the release notes. Features and enhancements included in 971 R3.2 that were not available in 971 R3.1 include the following:New Material Models:*MAT_255 ()Enhanced Material Models:support of user defined failure for:– *MAT_123 (VP=1)– *MAT_103– *MAT_024 (VP=1)*MAT_191 now supports end release for beams*MAT_187 updates*MAT_126 add corotational local coord. system for formulation-1Add V option for aopt=3,4–…

Running LS-DYNA jobs (either interactively or as a batch job) can be interrupted with sense-switch controls by creating files “d3kil”, “D3KIL” and “switch” in the running directory. This works as expected without the use of any “jobid” definition. However, when using a jobid parameter either using *KEYWORD_ID or in the command line (jobid=jobname), LS-DYNA expects…

Came across this nice article (PDF, 101kb) about inertia tensors.

The 10th bi-annual LS-DYNA Users Conference is less than a week away. You can visit the conference home page for more details. While you are there, look for information on d3VIEW in booth 101 hosted by FEA Information, Marsha Victory.

LS-DYNA offers ability to offset a defined curve. This helps us to for example to define an arbitrary fire time for airbags by simply changing the offset value rather than to change the entire curve. Depending on the type of curve, LS-DYNA adds two points at the beginning of the curve for positive offsets and…

When using TIEBREAK contacts, options other than 1, ties nodes ONLY if the nodes are initially in contact. Nodes not initially in contact will not be tied but can interact with master segments like the traditioanal compression-only contacts. To enforce the “initially” in contact condition, the [initial_separation-(slave_thickness+master_thickness)*0..5] < 0 which causes the initial penetration or…

A new LS-OPT support site is established with lots of useful information that covers examples, theory and many download materials.

Here are 10 things (based on experience) that one can use to improve contact stability in any LS-DYNA simulations. They are not in any particular order. 1. Avoid duplicate contact definitions. The general thumbrule is no pair of node/segment or segment/segment (in soft=2) should be treated for penetration by more than one contact defintion 2.…

Clustered solutions dominate the market today with MPP-LSDYNA being used worldwide when 2 or more processors per job are used. Managing compute nodes manually in a cluster is certainly primitive and hence the need for a good resource manager. SLURM is an open source resource manager with lots of good features and is available from…