Chapter 27: Large Sliding Analysis of a Buckle
27 Large Sliding Contact Analysis
of a Buckle
Summary 262
Introduction 263
Modeling Details 263
Solution Procedure 267
Modeling Tips 270
Input Files 271
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CHAPTER 27
Summary
Title Chapter 27: Large Sliding Contact Analysis of a Buckle
Features Deformable-deformable contact, bilinear, Coulomb friction model,
Hookean, isotropic elastic material, adaptive time stepping, solid elements
with assumed strain formulation
Geometry
Y 168 mm
X
Z
mm
247
Material properties E = 10GPa , = 0.4
Analysis characteristics Quasi-static analysis using: adaptive time stepping and geometric
nonlinearity due to large displacement
Boundary conditions Sliding, frictional contact with: ends fixed for second contact body and
contact between the two deformable bodies with = 0.1
Applied loads Prescribed displacements for the end nodes of the first contact body with
two load cases: insertion (clipping) and removal of the buckle
Element type 8-node solid element with assumed strain formulation
FE results 1. History plot of y-displacements for specific nodes
2. Normal and frictional contact force comparison of Nastran and Marc
3. Load displacement curves comparison between the frictional and
frictionless cases
Fx Fx
1000 Fx (N)
500
0.5 1.0 1.5
0
Time (s)
-500 Frictionless
Frictional
-1000
-1500
Insert Remove
-2000
Fx Fx
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Large Sliding Contact Analysis of a Buckle
Introduction
This problem demonstrates the ability of MD Nastran SOL 400 to do a frictional contact problem. An
ostensibly simple geometry poses a substantial challenge for the contact algorithm due to the large
sliding involved between the two deformable bodies. Sudden changes in the motion path pose a
challenge to the ability of the contact algorithm to correctly place the node on the contact surface while
respecting the various geometric details in the problem.
Due to large bending stresses in the deformed configuration, assumed strain formulation is used with the
8-node hexahedral elements. The material is elastic and the original geometry without residual stresses
is recovered upon the complete removal of the loading.
From elementary strength of materials analysis, the tip deflection for beam bending can be written as:
= PL 3 3EI
where P is the applied load, L is the length of the beam, I is the moment of inertia and E is the Young’s
modulus. The normal stress along the beam cross section varies in the thickness direction as:
xx = M t I
where M is the moment and t is the thickness coordinate. It must be noted that the above solution only
holds for small displacements and uniform cross section.
Modeling Details
A numerical solution has been obtained with MD Nastran’s SOL 400 for a 3-D representation of a belt
buckle with a deformable-to-deformable contact between the two pieces of the buckle. The details of
finite element model, contact simulation, material, load, boundary conditions, and solution procedure are
discussed below.
The case control section of the input contains the following options for nonlinear analysis:
SUBCASE 1
STEP 1
TITLE=Insertion (Clipping)
ANALYSIS = NLSTATIC
NLPARM = 1
BCONTACT = 1
SPC = 2
LOAD = 1
DISPLACEMENT(PLOT,SORT1,REAL)=ALL
SPCFORCES(PLOT,SORT1,REAL)=ALL
STRESS(PLOT,SORT1,REAL,VONMISES,BILIN)=ALL
NLSTRESS(PLOT,SORT1)=ALL
STEP 2
TITLE=Removal
ANALYSIS = NLSTATIC
NLPARM = 2
BCONTACT = 2
SPC = 6
LOAD = 2
DISPLACEMENT(PLOT,SORT1,REAL)=ALL
SPCFORCES(PLOT,SORT1,REAL)=ALL
STRESS(PLOT,SORT1,REAL,VONMISES,BILIN)=ALL
NLSTRESS(PLOT,SORT1)=ALL
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The analysis contains a single subcase with two steps. The two steps comprise of individual load
sequences consisting of insertion (clipping) and removal of the belt buckle. Each step has a definition
of convergence control option via NLPARM, contact table and parameters via BCONTACT, applied
displacements (or single point constraints) via SPC and the displacements and stress results for
the .f06 (output) file. A zoomed-in view of the cross section of the model shown in Figure 27-1 consists
of an outer piece modeled as body 2 with 5535 8-node 3-D continuum elements while the inner piece is
modeled as body 1 with 7087 solid elements. The guide position of body 1 with 5535 8-node 3-D
continuum elements while the outer piece is modeled as body 2 with 7087 solid elements.
Figure 27-1 Geometry and a Zoomed-in View of a Belt Buckle
Large displacement effects are included in the nonlinear analysis using the option:
PARAM LGDISP 1
While the assumed strain formulation is flagged using the option:
NLMOPTS,ASSM,assumed
The NLMOPTS field triggers the assumed strain formulation which provides a better bending behavior
of the continuum elements. This alleviates the difficulty associated with spuriously large shear stresses
induced due to bending moment. The LGDISP field indicated the use of large displacement, large rotation
kinematics of the element. This is adequate when the analysis consists of Hookean elastic material;
however, incase of large deformation plasticity or other inelastic models, the LRGSTRN parameter
should be used in the NLMOPTS option (for more details on its usage, please refer to : Chapter 3: 3-D
Sheet Metal Forming of this manual).
CHAPTER 27 265
Large Sliding Contact Analysis of a Buckle
Element Modeling
Besides the standard options to define the element connectivity and grid coordinate location, the bulk
data section contains various options which are especially important to do nonlinear analysis. The
nonlinear extensions to lower-order solid element, CHEXA can be activated by using the PSLDN1
property option to the regular PSOLID property option in the manner shown below:
PSOLID 1 1 0
PSLDN1 1 1 1 +
+ C4 SOLI L +
The PLSLDN1 option allows the element to be used in both large displacement and large strain analysis
and has no restrictions on the kinematics of deformation unlike the regular CHEXA elements with only
PSOLID property entry. The standard CHEXA elements are more suitable for large rotations but small
strain analysis due to their linear formulation in co-rotational system. While the difference may be small
or even negligible in elastic analysis, use of any inelastic material model would certainly require the use
of these options.
Modeling Contact
The BCPARA defines the number of bodies in contact with maximum number of contact entities (e.g.,
patches), nodes on the periphery of the contact surfaces and contact parameters like friction type (in this
case – node based, bilinear Coulomb model), friction coefficient, bias factor, and type of contact
procedure used.
BCPARA 0
FTYPE 6 BIAS 9.9E-01 ISPLIT 3
RVCNST 0.00
ERROR 0.005
It must be mentioned that the contact procedure being used (flagged via ISPLIT flag) is iterative
penetration checking procedure and must always be used for robustness in a quasi-static analysis.
Friction has been flagged via the FTYPE field where a 6 denotes the bilinear, Coulomb model. The
friction coefficient is 0.1 and is included in contact body definition with BCBODY option or the contact
tables using the BCTABLE option. Another significant point is the use of BIAS in frictional problems. The
bias factor measures the non-dimensionalized distance on both sides of the contact surface which is used
to make a decision if the node is in contact or not, based on whether the node falls within this band
defined by contact zone tolerance. Ideally, it should be 1.0 or as close to it. However, due to the
possibility of excessive iterations in case of even very slight penetration, the bias is kept as zero or, in
other words, a slight penetration is accepted. While a bias of zero works well for nonfrictional problems,
it can be a detriment for frictional problems which require the bias to be set as close to one as possible
in order to avoid a fictitious tangential force on the node which can cause non convergence of the
solution. Finally, the ERROR parameter denotes the contact zone tolerance. The default value is about
1/20th of the smallest element size for a solid element. In this case, it has been chosen to be an even
smaller value of 0.005.
To identify how the contact bodies can touch each other, the BCTABLE option is used. BCTABLE with
ID 0 is used to define the touching conditions at the start of the analysis. This is a mandatory option
required in SOL 400 for contact analysis and it is flagged in the case control section through the optional
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BCONTACT = 0 option. The BCTABLE with ID 1 is used to define the touching conditions for later
increments in the analysis, and it is flagged using BCONTACT = 1 in the case control section. Also, the
SLAVE-MASTER combination defines that the nodes for body 1 are nodes belonging to the slave body.
This, in literature, is referred by various terminologies as either contacting body nodes or tied nodes
(imagining the situation of multi-point constraints). The nodes belonging to body 2 are said to belong to
the master body which are also referred to as the contacted body nodes or the retained nodes (imagining
the situation of multi-point constraints)
BCTABLE 0 1
SLAVE 2 0. 0. .1 0. 0
0 0 0
MASTERS 1
BCTABLE 1 1
SLAVE 2 0. 0. .1 0. 0
0 0 0
MASTERS 1
The definition of the contact bodies (defined as body 1 and 2 in Figure 27-1) consists of the bulk data
entries. The BCBODY option defines the deformable body including the body ID, dimensionality, type of
body, type of contact constraints and friction etc. while the BSURF identifies the elements forming a part
of the deformable body as:
BCBODY 2 3D DEFORM 2 2
BSURF 2 50000 50001 50002 50003 50004 50005 50006
50007 50008 50009 50010 50011 50012 50013 50014
50015 50016 50017 50018 50019 50020 50021 50022
50023 50024 50025 50026 50027 50028 50029 50030
…
Material Modeling
The isotropic, Hookean elastic material properties of the deformable body are defined using the
following MAT1 option as follows:
MAT1 1 10000. 3571.43 .4 1.
The Young’s modulus is taken to be 10 GPa with a Poisson’s ratio of 0.4.
Loading and Boundary Conditions
The displacements for body 2 are fixed at the end in the following manner:
$ Displacement Constraints of Load Set : right_fixed_xyz
SPC1 5 123 100056 THRU 100074
SPC1 5 123 100446 THRU 100464
The loading involves application of displacement controlled boundary conditions as follows:
SPCADD 2 1 8 5
$ Enforced Displacements for Load Set : case1_left_xyz
$ Dummy Force Required to Activate the Following Enforced Displacements
FORCE 1 50084 0. .57735 .57735 .57735
SPCD 1 50084 1 85. 50085 1 85.
A total X displacement of 85 mm is applied to body 1. The application of the loads or displacements is
such that the total load applied at the end of the loading sequence is given in the input.
CHAPTER 27 267
Large Sliding Contact Analysis of a Buckle
Solution Procedure
The nonlinear procedure used is defined through the following NLPARM entry:
NLPARM 1 20 FNT 50 UV ALL
0.01
NLAUTO 1 .01 1. .1 1.2 1.-5 .5 0
10 0
FNT represents Full Newton-Raphson technique wherein the stiffness is reformed at every iteration;
KSTEP (field after FNT) is left blank and in conjunction with FNT, it indicates that the program will
determine if the stiffness needs to be reformed between the end of the load step and the start of next load
increment. Fifty (50) is the maximum number of allowed recycles for every increment and, if this were
to be exceeded, the load step would be cut-back and the increment repeated. UV indicates that the
maximum norm of vector component of the incremental displacements will be checked for convergence.
ALL indicates that intermediate output will be produced after every increment. The second line of
NLPARM indicates that a tolerance of 0.01 will be used for displacement based convergence checking.
NLAUTO defines the parameters in the adaptive load stepping scheme. The initial load step is 1% of the
total load. It must be noted that, for many problems including plasticity of complicated contact
conditions in the early stages of the analysis, this must be a very small percentage (typically 0.5%). The
smallest and largest ratio between the steps is 0.1 and 1.2, respectively, while the minimum value of the
step is 10 – 5 . Finally, the desired number of recycles is kept at ten which is the default in SOL 400. If this
number is chosen to be very small, then the step size is cut to a smaller size for convergence to be
achieved and there will be larger number of steps. If this number is very large, then the load step will
allow more iterations for convergence in the same step.
The number of increments is provided in the third field of the NLPARM option. It is also worth noting
that removing the NLAUTO option results in a constant load step procedure with a total of 20 load
increments per step (thus, a total of 40 for the analysis).
Results
Figure 27-2 shows the sequence of the analysis with a close-up view of the buckle. It can be seen that
the clip slides on top of the protrusion of the static frame without any penetration. It is quite remarkable
that even with the large motion as well as large sliding contact per load increment between the two
deformable contact bodies, the analysis shows a robust behavior.
A vector plot of the comparison of normal and frictional contact forces with the Marc results is presented
in Figure 27-3 and Figure 27-4, respectively. The contact forces for SOL 400 and Marc agree very well
in both magnitude and direction.
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Figure 27-2 Various Stages of Insertion of the Clip
(a) SOL 400 (b) Marc
Figure 27-3 Comparison of Contact Normal Forces
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Large Sliding Contact Analysis of a Buckle
(a) SOL 400 (b) Marc
Figure 27-4 Comparison of Contact Frictional Forces
Next, the load displacement for the frictional and frictionless cases are compared in Figure 27-5. Only
the X direction forces are plotted versus time. It is always recommended to perform a frictionless
analysis (nug_27f.dat) whenever possible to aid in the understanding of the affect of adding friction.
As expected, for the frictionless case, the load displacement curve is symmetric about the center line
(between the insertion and removal steps). Deformed geometry is shown at various peaks of the curve
and, as intuition would suggest, the peak forces correspond to the point of maximum bending. Addition
of the non-conservative friction forces destroys the symmetry and the peak insertion force increases
compared to the peak force in removal. The removal of the clip generates less pull-out force compared
to the push-in force. Also, the insertion force starts reducing due to frictional forces aiding the motion as
opposed to resisting the motion as the sliding switches from the convex part to the concave part of the
contact surface.
Fx Fx
1000 Fx (N)
500
0.5 1.0 1.5
0
Time (s)
-500 Frictionless
Frictional
-1000
-1500
Insert Remove
-2000
Fx Fx
Figure 27-5 Load Displacement Curve for the Frictional and Frictionless Cases
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Checking the finite element analysis with a hand calculation assists both in understanding the FEM as
well as the physics of the simulation. Solving elementary equations mentioned earlier for the bending
E t
stress yields, = 3--- -----------
- where is the tip displacement shown in Figure 27-6 during the insertion of the
2 2 L
clip.
Inc: 17
Time: 4.250e-001
4.213e+002
0 mm
3.368e+002 L=8
2.524e+002
1.679e+002
δ = 20 mm
8.349e+001
-9.664e-001
2ζ t = 6 mm
-8.542e+001
-1.699e+002
-2.543e+002
-3.388e+002
-4.232e+002 Y
Z X
lcase1
Comp 11 of Stress 1
Figure 27-6 Verify FEM with Simple Calculation
Performing the calculation of the bending stress at the outer fibers of the thinnest section gives,
3 E 2 t
2
3 10x10 9 N m 20mm 6mm N m 2 N
= --- -------------------- - = 4.69 x10 8 ------ ------------------ = 469 ----------- .
= --- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The value of
2 L 2 2 2 2 3 2
80mm m 10 mm mm
2
469N mm agrees closely to the corresponding bending stresses in Figure 27-6 of 423N mm 2 . As
expected, the linear solution presents an upper-bound to the actual stresses.
Modeling Tips
The two most important aspects in the analysis comprise of the inclusion of assumed strain enhancements
to the standard element formulation and the choice of contact and time stepping scheme parameters use
of adaptive load stepping scheme, and its associated parameters. The former is important due to presence
of bending stresses in the structure which can manifest themselves as (sometime large) spurious shear
stresses. This is a purely numerical artifact due to the standard, displacement based finite element chosen
which can be ameliorated by the use of an assumed strain enhancement to the standard element.
Among the numerical parameters affecting the convergence of the job, the two most important
parameters for this kind of analysis are the contact bias and maximum number of recycles for the adaptive
stepping scheme.
In contact analysis with friction, it is important to use a high bias (preferably 0.99) for frictional problems
for improved convergent results. In many cases (although, not in this problem, nug_27b.dat), it can
decrease the number of iterations as well.
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Large Sliding Contact Analysis of a Buckle
Next is the contact zone tolerance. Typically, a default value is 1/20th the smallest length of solid
element. If the contact zone is too big, then there could be a loss of accuracy due to acceptance of
penetrated nodes or large amount of recycling due to contact nodes separating. However, reducing the
contact zone tolerance may not always yield the reduction in the number of iterations. In fact, in certain
problems where there are not many separations expected, reducing to a very small number can even
increase the number of iterations due to contact detection and scaling of incremental displacements in
the iterative penetration checking algorithm in contact.
It is also worth noting that the adaptive load stepping improves the speed and accuracy of the analysis
quite significantly for this problem due to its intelligent choice of time steps based on the convergence
parameters. This adequately demonstrates the strength of the adaptive stepping in tough problems where
the smart algorithm adjusts the increment size based on the kinematics of deformation, contact
constraints, and convergence rates rather than the fixed time stepping where the only alternative is to cut
down the existing increment size in case of non convergence in the specified number of recycles.
It is also noted that a very high or very low number of desired number of recycles can either invoke an
excessive number of iterations or induce cutbacks during the analysis. For example, decreasing the
desired number of recycles to may increase the number of increments. Due to a large amount of sliding
and significant contact nonlinearity, a large number of recycles, in general, are expected for most
increments. Therefore, a high number of desired recycles proved to be useful in this particular example.
However, in problems with milder material and/or contact nonlinearities where only a few iterations per
increment are expected, a smaller number of desired recycles can yield faster results. This difference can
result in notable savings of the computing time for large jobs.
Note: For contact problems, artificial damping can improve the speed of convergence and
stability of the analysis as seen in nug_27c.dat.
Input Files
File Description
mug_27.dat Marc input for fixed time
nug_27.dat MD Nastran input for fixed time stepping
nug_27a.dat MD Nastran input with adaptive time stepping with bias = 0.99, contact
zone tolerance = 0.0 (default), desired number of recycles = 20
(default = 10)
nug_27b.dat MD Nastran input with adaptive time stepping bias = 0.0 (default), contact
zone tolerance = 0.005, desired number of recycles = 20 (default = 10)
nug_27c.dat MD Nastran input with adaptive time stepping bias = 0.99, contact zone
tolerance = 0.005, desired number of recycles = 20
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