Impact Analysis using ADINA

Daniel Jose Payen, Ph.D.

March 10, 2016

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 Presentation Overview
• Types of impact: crash and crush

• Failure mechanisms

• Equations to be satisfied

• Impact analysis with finite element method

• Example: Rod impacting a rigid surface

• Modelling recommendations

• Advantages of implicit time integration for impact

analysis

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 Impact Analysis
• An impact event (or collision) is a short duration
interaction between two or more bodies that causes a
change in motion due to the contact forces acting
between the bodies

• There are two types of impact events:

 Crash impact event

 Crush impact event

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 Crash Impact Event
• Occurs over a time scale comparable to the time for a
stress wave to propagate through the structure (typically
in the order of milliseconds for steels)

• Must be analyzed dynamically

• Wave propagation governs the crash event, e.g. if a rod

impacts a rigid surface, the impact duration is governed
solely by the stress wave. It is not dependent on the
initial velocity of the rod

• Examples of crash events: motor vehicle impacting at

speeds greater than 20 mph, impact of reed valve, etc.

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 Example of a Crash Impact Event

• Deformations magnified by factor 6.6

• Contact traction reaction vectors to visualize initiation of stress wave
• Unsmoothed band plot (no averaging of stresses)

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 Crush Impact Event
• Occurs over a time scale considerably longer than the
time for a stress wave to propagate through the
structure (typically in the order of seconds for steels)

• Can be analyzed quasi-statically

• Wave propagation is not important. Impact duration

determined from geometry, loading and boundary
conditions. It is not dependent on stress waves
propagation

• Example of crush event: crushing of motor vehicle roof

or door, crushing of impact tube, etc.

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 Example of a Crush Impact Event

• USA standard FMVSS 214 specifies minimum crush

resistance for car door, based on quasi-static test where
rigid steel cylinder is pushed into car door

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 Failure Mechanism
• Failure mechanism for crash and crush is very different.
Inertia forces provide stabilizing effect, thus structure is
less likely to buckle when load is applied very quickly

• Motor vehicle companies perform both crash and quasi-

static crush tests. Crush tests can be harder to pass

• In a crash test, g-levels must be lower than a specified

maximum

• In a crush test, must absorb a minimum amount of

energy when deformed a specified distance

• Crush tests are important as not all accidents occur at

high speeds. For example, roll over of vehicle with high
center of gravity (e.g. SUV or construction machinery)

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 Impact Solution must Satisfy
Force Equilibrium (Newton’s Second Law)

• Rate of change of momentum must equal the unbalanced

force acting on the body

• Impulse is integral of unbalance force over time, thus is

equal to change in momentum over that time period

Conservation of Energy

• The total energy of each body, and of the isolated system,

cannot change in time

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 Impact Analysis with Finite Element
Method
• Principal of virtual work enforces equilibrium between
the internal nodal point forces and external nodal
forces at each time step (provided solution has tightly
converged)

• Conservation of energy is not enforced, and hence

energy might be gained or lost from the system

• Energy can be lost due to:

• Numerical damping in the time integration scheme

• Inaccurate time integration of impact event
• Loose convergence tolerances

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 To Minimize the Energy Lost
• Use a time Integration scheme that does not artificially
damp the low frequency modes, such as the Bathe
implicit time integration scheme

• Use a time step size that is sufficiently small to

accurately integrate the impact event in time

• For a harmonic response, we need at least 20 steps

per cycle, otherwise there will be significant amplitude
decay and period elongation

• Use tight convergence tolerances

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Example of Lost Energy
• Drop bar from 1.25m and allow to bar fall under gravity. Since
no physical damping, bar should rebound to original height

• In finite element solution, bar does not rebound to original

height as energy is lost. The smaller the time step size, the
more accurate the solution

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Physical Interpretation of Lost Energy
• During impact, bodies are accelerated and decelerated
under the action of contact forces

• In finite element solution, bodies must be in contact for a

sufficient number of time steps to ensure that the contact
forces are accurate

• If bodies are only in contact for a few time steps, the

contact forces are not accurate such that the body will
not be accelerated to the correct velocity and kinetic
energy is lost

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 ADINA Energy Calculation Feature
• The ADINA energy calculation feature can be used to
quantify amount of energy lost due to inaccurate time
integration

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 Rod Impacting Rigid Surface
• Consider problem where a rod with constant velocity
impacts a rigid surface

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 Rod Impacting Rigid Surface
• This classical problem is popular in textbooks as it has a
simple closed-form solution

• However, this is a difficult problem to analyze

numerically, and thus serves as a good example to
illustrate the difficulties encountered during impact
analysis

• The rod impacting a rigid surface is a crash type problem

since the response is governed by the stress wave. Thus,
the analysis must accurately capture the wave
propagation

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 Rod Impacting Rigid Surface
• After initial impact, a compressive stress wave propagates
up the rod transforming kinetic energy to elastic strain
energy

• When the compressive stress wave reaches the top, all

kinetic energy is transformed into compressive strain
energy

• The compressive stress wave then reflects as a tensile

stress wave (to satisfy the zero traction boundary
condition) and propagates downwards. As it propagates
downwards, strain energy is transformed back to kinetic
energy

• When the reflected tensile stress wave reaches the bottom

of the rod, all the kinetic energy is recovered and rod
moves away from rigid surface in a stress-free state

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 Rod Impacting Rigid Surface
• Impact duration is solely dependent on time for stress
wave to propagate through the rod, not on the initial
velocity of the rod

• In a general impact event between compliant bodies,

rebound is not stress-free such that the body “wobbles”
during the free-flight after impact.

• The stress waves eventually dissipate to friction in the

structure

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 Exact Solution in Time Domain for Rod
Problem
• Exact contact solution in time domain is a rectangular
function with magnitude, F, and time period, T

• The time period, T, is impact time duration (time for stress

wave to propagate up the rod and back down)

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 Exact Solution in Frequency Domain for
Rod Problem
• Exact contact solution in frequency domain is a “sinc”
function, obtained from a Fourier transform
• Frequency content of the “sinc” function extends to infinity
because of the discontinuities in the rectangular function

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Gibbs Ripple Expected in the FE Solution
• In finite element solution, frequency content is finite because:

• Mesh has finite number of DOF such that the spatial

discretization can only capture modes with finite frequency
(assuming that neither the mass is zero, nor the stiffness is
infinite)
 1 
• Bathe method cuts-out modes with frequency, f   
 t 
• Hence, in essence, finite element method behaves as a low-
pass filter. Since the high frequency content of the “sinc”
function is not captured, we expect to see a Gibbs ripple in the
solution at the beginning and end of impact

• The ringing artefacts of the Gibbs ripple generate contact

reversal and spurious high frequency oscillations in the
solution

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 Effect of Contact Penetration
• Impact is highly sensitive to contact penetration

• Contact penetration reduces the Gibbs ripple and the

spurious high frequency oscillations, because now the
velocities and contact forces do not abruptly change,
but progressively increase over a finite period of time

• However, contact penetration artificially softens the

contact surface, which artificially reduces the impact
forces and increases the impact duration

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Effect of Contact Penetration for Rod
Problem on Stresses

Increased contact penetration

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Effect of Contact Penetration for Rod
Problem on Contact Forces

Increased contact penetration

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 Modelling Recommendations for Impact
• Use a sufficiently small time step size, Δt, to accurately
capture the temporal response

• Use a sufficiently small element size, h, to accurately

capture the spatial response

• Use the optimal CFL number when wave propagation

governs the response (crash problems)

• Use minimum amount of contact-compliance needed

to remove spurious high frequency oscillations and
prevent contact reversal

• Use tight convergence tolerances for implicit time

integration

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 Use Sufficiently Small Time Step Size
• Bodies must be in contact for multiple time steps to
accurately integrate the impact event

• This ensures that energy is conserved during impact, and

that the peak impact force is captured

• The appropriate number of time steps depends on the shape

of the contact force-time curve. For a rectangular contact
force-time curve, the bodies should be in contact for at least
100 time steps such that

timpact
t  where timpact is the impact duration
100
• For a more complex contact force-time curve, more steps
might be required

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 Use Sufficiently Small Time Step Size
• If the bodies are not in contact for a sufficient number of
time steps, significant energy will be lost during the
contact event

• This can be quantified using the ADINA energy calculation

feature

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 Use Sufficiently Small Element Size
• In crash, pressure waves, shear waves, Rayleigh waves,
pressure-generated-shear waves (Lamb waves) might all
be present

• Mesh must be sufficiently fine to accurately represent the

spatial response of all these waves

• Mesh must also be sufficiently fine to capture global

response of structure, e.g. bending of reed valve

• Standard techniques can be used to determine whether the

mesh is sufficiently fine (e.g. stress jumps between the
elements)

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 Use Optimal CFL Number
• The relationship between spatial and temporal discretization
has a significant effect on wave propagation solutions

• To quantify this relationship, we use the CFL number,

defined as the number of element lengths that an elastic
stress wave propagates in one time step

• The optimal CFL number for the Bathe method is CFL=1

• For crash impact analysis, we should use the optimal CFL

number, while ensuring the conditions on the time step size,
Δt, and mesh size, h, are also satisfied

• This implies that the mesh should be uniform, and the mesh
size will be different in regions with different material
properties

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 Use Optimal CFL Number
• We use the optimal CFL condition to obtain Δt from h, or
vice-versa, while ensuring the previous conditions on Δt
and h are satisfied

• In certain problems, for example the reed flexural impact

problem, the mesh size is specified by the global response,
and hence we use the CFL condition to obtain Δt given h,
and ensure that the Δt < t impact / 100

• In other problems, the CFL condition is used to obtain h

given Δt. For example, for the rod impacting the rigid
surface, the rod must be meshed with at least 50 elements
along the length to ensure it is in contact for 100 time steps
given the condition CFL=1

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 Use Optimal CFL Number
• In practical analyses there are different wave types (e.g.
pressure waves, shear waves, Rayleigh waves, etc.) each
with a different wave speed

• Typically, the fastest wave (the p-wave) is used to compute

the CFL number. Therefore, the other waves will not be
accurately solved for

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 Use Contact-Compliance
• Spurious high frequency oscillations such as chatter and
ringing are often observed in the impact solution, especially
the contact forces, stresses, and accelerations

• These spurious oscillations are triggered at the beginning

and end of the impact event because the velocity abruptly
changes to satisfy the contact no-penetration condition

• Contact-compliance can be used to reduce these spurious

oscillations

• However, contact-compliance artificially reduces the impact

forces and artificially increases the impact duration

• Therefore, use the smallest amount of contact-compliance

that removes the spurious oscillations. This is model
dependent

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 Use Tight Convergence Tolerances
• Since the time step size is very small for impact, the
effective stiffness is large

• As a result, convergence can be very slow when contact is

first established; see Lecture on Contact Theory

• To ensure we have converged to an accurate solution, the

contact convergence tolerance (RCTOL) must be very tight

• Typically, we use RCTOL=1E-5 (default 5E-2). Also, as in this

case the convergence rate is improved for hard contact,
reducing the EPSN parameter to EPSN=1E-50 can also help

• Check that CFORCE is decreasing at convergence. Also,

check that the consistent nodal contact forces do not
abruptly change during the time steps when in contact (plot
consistent contact force vectors in ADINA post-processing)

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 Advantages of Implicit Time Integration for
Impact Analysis
• Second-order elements can be used. Important for flexural
impact problems

• A consistent mass matrix can be used. Important when

model has rotational DOF, e.g. shells, as no good lumped
masses exist for rotational DOF

• More confidence in the solution. Equilibrium and contact

equations exactly satisfied at current solution time;
consistent mass matrix used

• Stiffness-proportional damping can be used

• More features available such as mesh glue

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