LS Dyna Contacts PDF

PEMP
AME2510
Contacts in LS-Dyna
Session delivered by:

Mr.Suman M.L.J.
 M.S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru

PEMP
AME2510
Session Topics
•Types of Contacts
•Interaction between parts
•Brief discussion about how contacts works?
 M.S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru 2

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LS-DYNA'S CONTACT ALGORITHMS
•Flexible body contact

•Flexible body to rigid body contact
•Rigid body to rigid body contact
•Edge-to-edge contact
•Eroding contact
•Tied surfaces
•Rigid walls

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CONTACT TYPES
•Single surface
•Nodes to surface
•Surface to surface
CONTACT OPTIONS
•Normal
•Automatic
•Rigid
•Tied
•Tied with failure
•Eroding
•Edge
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CONTACT MODELING IN LS-DYNA

•Contact provides a way of treating interaction
between different parts or disjoints parts. It is
useful for impacting one part over other part.
•Contact forms an integral part of many large-
deformation problems.
•Accurate modeling of contact interfaces between
bodies is crucial for the prediction capability of
the finite element simulations.
•Contact in LS-DYNA is defined using contact
surfaces. Contact occurs when one segment of a
model’s outer surface penetrates another
segment.

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INTERACTION BETWEEN PARTS

CONTACT INTERFACES
• Penalty stiffness: Determines the size of the force
applied on the nodes in contact.
High penalty  - smaller penetrations and
- larger risk for instability
Penalty stiffness depends on:
- element volume
- contact segment area
- element stiffness

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• Definition of segments:
1. Segment by segment
2. By property sets. Example: master - part1, part2
slave - part3, part4
Contact entities (analytical surfaces) can be attached to rigid

bodies, and interact with deformable parts.
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INTERACTION BETWEEN PARTS

Contact Interfaces
F = f.k.dp
Master Slave
f - Penalty Scale factor

k- Proportionality const.
dp - Penetration

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• Single-Surface Contact:
-The single surface contact algorithm
establishes contact when an external
surface of one body contacts itself or
the external surface of another body
- Single surface contact is the most
general type of contact used because
in LS-DYNA program automatically
searches all of the external surfaces
within a model to determine if
penetration has occurred.
- Since all of the external surfaces are
included, no contact or target surface
definitions are required.
Consider when a part
contacts itself
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•Most impact and crash applications require single surface contact to be

defined.
• Unlike Implicit modeling, where over-defining contact will dramatically
increase CPU time,where as in single surface contact in LS-DYNA will
cause minor CPU time increase
•The valid contact types used are
Single Surface, Automatic Single
Surface, Automatic General,
Eroding Single Surface and
Single Edge.
•Single surface contact can be
very powerful for self contact or
large deformation problems
where areas of contact are not
known beforehand.
Crush box

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Example for single surface contact:
Side impact simulation using MDB

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•Nodes to Surface Contact

-Node to surface contact algorithm establishes contact when a
contacting node penetrates a target surface. It is the fastest algorithm
because it is asymmetric. Here only the contact nodes impacting the
target surface is considered
-Node to surface contact is very robust for problems where the contact
area is relatively small and the contact area is known beforehand.

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Nodes to surface cont…
The following guidelines should be used with nodes to surface type

of contact:
Flat or convex surfaces should be the target surface(Master)

while concave surfaces should be contact nodes (Slave).
Coarse meshes should be target surface and finer meshes
should be contact surfaces.
• One part will be MASTER, another part will be Slave

• A node may belong to several parts
• An interface node can be in rigid body
• Breaks down with bad or disjointed mesh

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Algorithm
1. For each slave node finds
the closest master node or
master segment
2. Check if slave node has
penetrated the master
segment
3. Find contact point
4. Compute penetration
5. Apply forces to reduce Detection of Closest master node
penetration

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Search for master node with minimum distance to slave node
•S0 - Previous closest
segment to N at time t1
Node •M1 -closest node to N
belonging to S0
S4 •S0, S1, S2, S3 Segments
S5 connected to M1
M2 •M2 - New closest master
S0 S2 S6 node
M1 •S2 ,S4, S5, S6 New possible
closest master segment
S1 S3
Detection of Closest master node

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Example for Node to surface contact:
Drop test of a Liquid tank

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• Surface to Surface Contact

-Surface to Surface contact algorithm Master - slave
establishes contact when the surface of one contacts
body penetrates the surface of another
-Surface to Surface contact is fully
symmetric so that the choice of contact and
target surfaces are arbitrary.
-For Surface to Surface contact ,nodal
components are required for the contact and
target surfaces. Nodes may belong to
multiple contact surfaces.
Fm3  f s  k  d ps
-Surface to Surface contact is a general
algorithm and is commonly used for bodies fs = penalty scale factor
that have large contact areas and the contact k = proportional constant
surfaces are known. dp3=penetration at node
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Surface to Surface Contact cont…

-Surface to Surface contact algorithm records the overall
resultant contact forces in the ASCII rcforc file.
-Surface to Surface contact is most efficient for bodies that
experience large amounts of relative sliding, such as a block
sliding on a plane.
- Simulate impact between two surfaces
- Works good when both are convex
- On the master side segments must be with shell or Solid elements
- Not affected by bad mesh

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Surface to Surface Contact cont…

Example for Surface to Surface Contact
Impact of a two bar

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•Automatic Contact
- Automatic contact allows contact to occur on both sides of
shell elements
- Automatic contact is most commonly used
- Difference in automatic orientation of surface
- Checks are made in both sides of shell

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• General Contact
- General contact does not consider shell thickness on
contact force calculations.
- General contact is Simple and widely used
- Advantage is extremely fast and robust
- Concern is surface orientation
- Orientation will occur, only when no penetration

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• Eroding Contact
-The purpose of defining
eroding contact is to allow
contact to occur with the
remaining elements, after
the elements originally
forming the outer surface
have failed.
-By using these type of
contact where solid
elements should fail after
an impact. As it has to Impact of a projectile to a plate
mimic the real world
conditions

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•Tied Contact
- Gluing together of contact surface to
target surface. May be of interest
when the meshes do not fit together
- Both should be coplanar initially
- Thereafter contact nodes are forced
to maintain the iso-parametric position
- Master can deform , and slave will
follow
- Coarser mesh will be master
(i.e,mesh2 )
- Often used to model bolted parts
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• Edge contact
- Edge contact will be used when the surface normal are orthogonal
to the impact direction.
- For sheet metal forming
Impact of a corrugated plates

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General Contact Guidelines

•Initial penetrations between contact surfaces are not allowed.
If LS-DYNA detects initial penetration between surfaces, it will
automatically move the overlapping surfaces out of contact.
•Always use realistic material property and shell thickness
values.The material properties and geometry of contacting surfaces
are used to determine k.
•Do not make multiple contact definitions between the same parts.
•Use single surface contact if the exact contact behavior is not
known beforehand.
•List the defined contact surfaces prior to solution to ensure that
contact has been properly defined.

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Controls in LS-DYNA
Session delivered by:

Mr.Suman M.L.J.

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Session Topics
Basic solution control options in LS-Dyna.
 LS-Dyna Binary and ASCII output files.
 Simulation control
 Solution Control
Card Format and creation

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Basic solution control options

The basic parameters to be specified in an explicit solution are:
• Time
-The actual time for which the physical process is being
simulated.
-Here actual solution time should be of very short duration,
often in milliseconds.
• Critical Time step

-The time step for an explicit analysis is determined as the
minimum stable time steps in any deformable finite element in
the mesh.

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Critical Time step cont…..
-This is determined by the CFL condition (Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy

criterion) that determines the stable time step in an element as
characteristic length divided by the acoustic wave
l
t 
c
Where, t is the time needed for the wave to propagate
through the length l
l is the characteristic length
c is the acoustic wave

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L c
T cri 
E

Where, E = Young’s modulus

 = Density
- To ensure stability maximum timestep is normally multiplied by

a scale factor (TSSFAC) of 0.9, but could reduce to as low as 0.66.
This is used to decrease the time step.
- LS-Dyna solver automatically calculates the minimum time step
size of each element based on the length and density.

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- The actual time step size used by LS-Dyna is the smallest of

these values
- Elements resulting in the 100 smallest timesteps are reported in
the d3hsp file for debugging during solution
- Timesteps may also be plotted in LS-Pre/Post for debugging
- 1 ms – a commonly used minimum timestep for
crashworthiness problems
Note: The critical Time step size for explicit time integration depends on
element length and material properties (sonic speed)

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TIME INTEGRATION
For nonlinear problem, only numerical solutions are possible. LS-
DYNA uses the explicit central difference method to integrate the
equation of motion
The semi-discrete equations of motion at time n is given as
Man = Pn- F n + Hn
Where, M is the diagonal mass matrix,
pn accounts for external and body force loads,
Fn is the stress divergence vector, and
Hn is the hourglass resistance.

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Comparision of time integration techniques

Implicit
Explicit
 solves the equation at time t+dt
 predicts the solution at time based on itself, and also using
t+dt by using the solution at the solution which has been
time t. found for time t.
 The displacement of node n2 at

 The displacement of node n2 at
time level t+Δt is equal to known
time level t+Δt is equal to known
values of displace-ment at nodes n1,
values of the displacement at
n2, and n3 at time level t, and also
nodes n1, n2, and n3 at time level
the unknown displacements of
t.
nodes n1 and n3 at time level t+Δt.

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TIME INTEGRATION
• TERMINATION TIME, TIME STEP
tn-1 tn tn+1..
0 Tt
Time step
size t
The shorter time step, the more time increments needed to reach
the termination time.
stiffness density Element size
Speed of sound
TIME
STEP
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TIME INTEGRATION Cont…

• Direct methods to increase the time step:
- increase the element size (merge small elements)
- increase the density
- decrease the stiffness
• Special methods to increase the time step:
- Mass scaling
• increases density in elements to get larger time step
• increases the total mass
• Methods to decrease the total CPU-time:
- Reduce the number of elements
- Choose a simpler element type, formulation
- Reduce termination time
- Speed up loading process
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GLOBAL DATA
• INITIAL VELOCITIES:
Initial velocities can be applied to the complete system or to
parts.

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GLOBAL DATA cont…

• BODY FORCES:
Body forces or “ base acceleration” is a force acting on a volume
or certain mass. The unit for body forces is N/kg or m/s2.
Examples:

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OUTPUT CONTROL
• OUTPUT DATA
- Output data for animations
- Output data for plotting
• ANIMATIONS:
Position, displacement, velocities, acceleration, stresses
and strains are stored in binary files with an interval
specified by the user.
• PLOT DATA:
Various variables can be stored and are normally stored
in different ASCII files depending on type of data

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OUTPUT CONTROL cont..

• OTHER COMMON CONTROL OPTIONS:
- Time step computation method
- Standard formulations for beams and shells
- Global penalty for sliding interfaces
- Input method for materials and parts
- Global system damping
- Number of CPU’s for execution
- Coupling options (MYDAMO)
- Mass scaling
- Dynamic relaxation
- ALE options

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POST-PROCESSING
• Output File - d3hsp File (ASCII)
– Errors and warnings
– Echo of input data
– Critical contact time step - must not be smaller than the
actual time step (search for surface timestep)
– Initial contact penetrations (search for penetration)
– Masses, COGs, and Inertias (search for mass of body)
– Mass scaling information (search for added mass).
Should not be larger than 5% of the total mass.
– 100 most critical time steps (search for 100 smallest
timesteps). If just a few elements spoil the time step, try
to repair the mesh or use mass scaling.
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POST-PROCESSING Cont..
• Animation Data - d3plot Files
– Animation
– Gives displacements, velocities, accelerations, stresses,
strains, …)
– Translate in HyperMesh .res file using hmdyna or use
HyperView for direct input
– Check for validity (contacts, penetrations, overall
deformation)
– Check for failing regions (plastic strain)
– Shell results are given on the different planes of the
shells

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POST-PROCESSING Cont..
• Plotting Data - ASCII Files
– xy plotting
– glstat: Energies
• watch kinetic energy if mass scaling is used
• watch hourglass energy to be < 5% of internal energy
• watch interface energy
• check how kinetic and internal energy behave to each
other
• stability of solution (no jumps in energy, or noise)
– nodeout: Displacements (calculate intrusions, relative
displacements, distances)
– rcforc, secforc, rwforc, …: Forces, accelerations (very
noisy, need filtering to obtain essential information)

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POST-PROCESSING cont..
• Filtering (low pass filter)
fc - cutoff frequency
0dB
pass region block region
fc Frequency [Hz]

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• SAE Filter
– Low pass filter
– Filter classes by frequency: 60, 180, 600, 1000 Hz (1/s)
– Recommended usage:
Vehicle structural analysis
Collision simulation input 60
Integration for velocity and displacement 180

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• Using Filters
– Always state how the result was filtered
– Be sure how the filter affects the result
– Be careful about the beginning and the end of the curve
– If results are compared between physical and numerical
experiment use the same filter class

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SIMULATION CONTROL
• Sense Switch controls allow the user to interrupt the solution
process and to check for the actual state.
• To use Sense Switch controls Type in the LS-Dyna solver as
shown below
‘Control-C’ Interrupt LS-Dyna solver and prompts for a sense
switches
sw1. A restart file is written and LS-Dyna terminates.
sw2. LS-dyna responds with time and cycle numbers.
sw3. A restart file is written and LS-Dyna continues calculations
sw4. A plot state is written and LS-Dyna continues calculations.

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SOLUTION CONTROL
• The LS-Dyna solver writes all important messages (errors, warnings,
failed elements, contact problems) to the LS-Dyna output window and
to the file d3hsp
• The First estimation of CPU time is usually too high. So by using
CTRL-C to interrupt the solver and by typing sw2 (Sense Switch
controls) for the actual values of the global statistics.

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General Approach involved in solving LS-Dyna

•Create FE Model
•Choose Material Model and Properties
•Assign Material and Property
•Assign loads and boundary condition
•Specify control parameters
•Create “.k” input file
•Solve the .k file in LS-Dyna solver to get
“d3plot” output file
•Post process the d3plot file in LS-Dyna post
processor

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Approach to modeling – things to remember,

1.Components
tips, pitfalls
• All material model : Elastic modulus , density and
Poisson’s ratio are common input require
• All additional parameters are material model dependent
• Unit consistency needs to be carefully examined for
various material models while providing numerical values
for various material model parameters.

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•All stress-strain data must be provided in the form of true stress-

true strain data
•Time step should not be less then critical time step otherwise
computational error will grownup and instability will develop in
the solution
2.Interfaces/Contacts
1. While creating contact slave and master segments are
necessary for one way contact.
2. If necessary then only specify the cards value other wise
go with default values.

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INPUT FORMAT
•Input decks for analysis consist of data blocks, each consisting of
a keyword followed by data pertaining to the keyword
•Data blocks are either free- or fixed-format
•Input can change from free- to fixed-format anywhere within the
input deck, but not within a data block
•Input is order independent except for the *END keyword at the
end of the input deck
•Keywords are left justified and start with a ‘*’ in the first column
•A ‘$’ sign in the first column indicates a comment line
•Input is case insensitive

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COMMANLY USED KEYWORDS

*KEYWORD *SECTION *BOUNDARY
*TITLE *EOS *INTERFACE
*DATABASE *HOURGLASS *RIGIDWALL
*CONTROL *SET
*NODE *DEFINE
*ELEMENT *CONTACT
*MAT *CONSTRAINED
*PART *INITIAL
*INCLUDE *LOAD
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BASIC STRUCTURE
Area Component Keyword
Geometry Nodes *NODE
Elements *ELEMENT_
Material Part *PART
Section *SECTION_
Material *MAT_
EOS *EOS_
Hourglass *HOURGLASS
Contact Contact Definition *CONTACT_
Rigidwall Definition *RIGIDWALL_

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BASIC STRUCTURE Cont…

Loads and BCs Loads *LOAD_
BCs *BOUNDARY_SPC_
Load Curves *DEFINE_CURVE
Constraints Constrained Nodes *CONSTRAINED_N
ODE_SET
Welds *CONSTRAINED_S
POT_WELD
Rivets *CONSTRAINED_RI
VETS

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BASIC STRUCTURE Cont…

Output Control Various *DATABASE_
Default *CONTROL_OUTPUT
Termination Time *CONTROL_TERMINATION
CPU *CONTROL_CPU
DOF *TERMINATION_NODE
Contact *TERMINATION_CONTACT

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SAMPLE DECK

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SAMPLE DECK cont….

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CONTROL CARDS
• Control cards means setting of importand parameters and Input
options
• Default settings are acceptable but the following settings should
be defined by the user
*CONTROL_ENERGY
Hourglass Energy Calculation - optional (HGEN = 2)
*CONTROL_PARALLEL
Controls the number of CPU‘s required (Default = 1 CPU)

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*CONTROL_TERMINATION
Sets the end time
*CONTROL_TIMESTEP
Sets the analysis time step in two ways
(1) Time step is determined automatically (default)
(2) Constant time setep determined by the user
(Paramter DT2MS).
The mass is scaled for elements that violate the time step

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DATABASE CONTROL
• Database control is used for setting result output
• Default is just the output of the d3hsp file, the protocol file
(ASCII)
• The result output is defined by the *DATABASE_ cards
*DATABASE_BINARY_D3PLOT
• Sets the frequency of the displacement and stress output
• Writes the d3plot files (binary)
*DATABASE_BINARY_D3DUMP
• Sets the output frequency for the restart file
• Write the d3dump files (binary)
• Needed for restart after system failure

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*DATABASE_GLSTAT
• Sets the frequency of the energy output.
• Writes the glstat file (ASCII)
*DATABASE_MATSUM
• Sets the frequency of the material-wise result output

• Writes the matsum file (ASCII)
• Contents are for example the internal energy of a
component

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*BOUNDARY_PRESCRIBED_MOTION
• Defines prescribed displacement or velocity over time for
a node or node set.

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*CONSTRAINED_EXTRA_NODES
• Nodes that are not a direct part of a Rigid Body can be
defined as associated with a Rigid Body.

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*CONSTRAINED_JOINT_OPTION
• Joints can only be defined between two Rigid Bodies

• Joint-Types:

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*CONSTRAINED_NODAL_RIGID_BODY
• A nodal rigid body consists of several nodes that form a
Rigid Body.
Nodal
Rigid
Body
• Important: Nodal rigid bodies cannot have nodes of

another Rigid Body

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*CONSTRAINED_RIGID_BODIES
• One Rigid Body is united with another one. The resulting body has
the ID of the master body.
COG 1 COG 2
Rigid body 1Rigid body 2 Rigid body 1

Mass = 20kgMass = 20kg Mass = 40kg
*CONSTRAINED_RIGID_BODIES COG
Master = RB 1 1
Slave = RB 2

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*CONSTRAINED_RIVET
*CONSTRAINED_SPOTWELD
• Connection of two nodes with a rivet or weld
• Failure of weld points can be defined

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*DEFINE_CURVE
• Definition of a xy curve
• Pairs of points are defined and get interpolated linearly.
• Example: Stress-strain curve of a material

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*INITIAL_VELOCITY
*INITIAL_VELOCITY_NODE
*INITIAL_VELOCITY_GENERATION
• Definition of initial velocities of node sets, nodes, or parts
respectively.
*LOAD_BODY_OPTION
• Definition of base accelerations to the whole system
(LOAD_BODY_X, LOAD_BODY_Y,
LOAD_BODY_Z).
• Mostly used for gravity loads

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PEMP

Session delivered by:

 M.S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru

 M.S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru 2

LS-DYNA'S CONTACT ALGORITHMS

•Flexible body contact

 M.S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru 3

CONTACT MODELING IN LS-DYNA

 M.S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru 5

INTERACTION BETWEEN PARTS

 M.S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru 6

Contact entities (analytical surfaces) can be attached to rigid

INTERACTION BETWEEN PARTS

f - Penalty Scale factor

 M.S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru 8

•Most impact and crash applications require single surface contact to be

 M.S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru 10

Example for single surface contact:

Side impact simulation using MDB

 M.S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru 11

•Nodes to Surface Contact

 M.S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru 12

Nodes to surface cont…

The following guidelines should be used with nodes to surface type

Flat or convex surfaces should be the target surface(Master)

• One part will be MASTER, another part will be Slave

 M.S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru 13

Nodes to surface cont…

 M.S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru 14

Nodes to surface cont…

Detection of Closest master node

 M.S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru 15

Nodes to surface cont…

Example for Node to surface contact:

Drop test of a Liquid tank

• Surface to Surface Contact

Surface to Surface Contact cont…

 M.S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru 18

Surface to Surface Contact cont…

Impact of a two bar

 M.S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru 19

 M.S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru 20

 M.S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru 21

 M.S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru 22

Impact of a corrugated plates

General Contact Guidelines

 M.S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru 25

Session delivered by:

 M.S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru

 M.S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru 27

Basic solution control options

• Critical Time step

 M.S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru 28

Critical Time step cont…..

-This is determined by the CFL condition (Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy

 M.S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru 29

Critical Time step cont…..

Where, E = Young’s modulus

- To ensure stability maximum timestep is normally multiplied by

 M.S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru 30

Critical Time step cont…..

- The actual time step size used by LS-Dyna is the smallest of

 M.S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru 31