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3/1/2021 The Difference Between Linear and Nonlinear FEA?
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The Difference Between

Linear and Nonlinear MOST
FEA? POPULAR
I remember my rst presentation regarding my Ph.D. It
was my rst year on the doctoral program, and I was 
starting to be on a rst-name basis with people that were
Test your FEA
skills!
my teachers just a semester ago. I went to the middle of Quiz (2-3 min.)
the room and started talking about shell buckling… the

problem was everything I did was calculated with LBA. I All about
simply didn’t know the difference between linear and Buckling
nonlinear FEA! Don’t worry… you don’t have to follow my
Analysis
posted on August 20th,
mistakes! 2019

Linear Finite Element Method simpli es a lot of things.
FEA by Hand
For instance, the material will never yield resulting in posted on March 9th,
unrealistically high stresses in your model. Also, you may 2019
not predict buckling or membrane state (or do it very 

poorly) because nonlinear geometry is not taken into How Accurate is
account. Nonlinear FEA, when de ned correctly, takes
FEA?
posted on February 3rd,
care of all those problems for you. 2019

If you want to avoid blunders I did as a Ph.D. researcher…
Linear vs
de nitely read on! Nonlinear FEA!
posted on February 20th,
2019
Linear or nonlinear geometry

This may not be the most “obvious” part of the nonlinearity
but I start here… because this is how I have learned
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3/1/2021 The Difference Between Linear and Nonlinear FEA? | Enterfea
nonlinear FEA. You see, when you use linear analysis

solver assumes that you will be within “small Stay
deformations”. This actually means that 2 assumptions newsletter
are made:
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Assumption 1: Deformation do not impact how the directly to your inbox.
structure behaves (i.e. noting enters membrane

state) Your name
Assumption 2: There is no stability failure
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The two above are big ones… unless you are designing
something solid in shape. I mean, if you really have to
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and it won’t buckle either. In such a case nonlinear
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… funny thing is, it won’t do you any harm either! If you use
a nonlinear geometry analysis with something that
behaves linearly… you will get the same outcomes as from
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Imagine you have a string attached on both ends to the
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has to get longer to deform downward with this nice arc.
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Elongation is not “free” – you have to apply a normal force
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to elongate something. And with this in mind, the string
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normal force inside it. This limits the deformation and
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allows the string to actually carry the load. You use this
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phenomenon every time you hang your laundry to dry!
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While seemingly obvious, the linear analysis does not see
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the system does not impact its response. In other words, • Connections
the string gets longer to allow for very big deformations,
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The second problem is with stability. As you most likely FEMAP

know you can pull a crate on a string, but you can’t push
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the crate with the same string. What would happen is that
the string would simply tangle up, and not carry any
compression. In an extremely simpli ed form, this is
bucking.
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In essence, everything that is slender (thin and relatively

long) have a “critical load”. When you apply this load,
instead of nicely carrying it with compression the element
will simply “buckle”. Usually, this will look like your element
simply “bends into an arc”. This actually is a form of
failure… sadly linear analysis will gladly load your element
way above its critical load and display nice results.
Completely ignoring the fact that your element actually
failed way before the applied load level!
Sometimes, buckling can catch even experienced

professionals by surprise. Take a look at the shell below.
Maximal stress is 140MPa (way below the yield of
355MPa). However what you don’t see here is, that such a
shell buckles under the compressive stress of around 80-
100MPa (in this case) and that it will fail under load much
smaller than the one obtained in the analysis… This means
that we just failed to estimate the maximal capacity. Sadly,
based on the outcomes of linear analysis alone, we can
think that our shell can be loaded much more than in
reality! I know, it’s scary!
LBA to the rescue!
Luckily for us, there are other analyses we can perform to

check if we will lose stability or not. Without a doubt, a
Linear Bifurcation Analysis (LBA) is the most popular
choice. This is still a “linear” analysis (as the name
suggest), but it’s not a “stress analysis” in a sense. What it
does is, that it tells you how many times you have to
increase the load in your model to cause the ideal critical
failure.
This means, that if you have a beam you can use LBA to
see where it will fail due to instability. A pretty nifty trick!
But there is a big problem in this paradise. As I already told

you LBA is linear by de nition. This means for instance,
that it cannot see nonlinear geometry in the model. So…
your model cannot enter “membrane state” we already
discussed, and all pressure loaded plates are bent (not in
tension) regardless of their deformations. This means,
that LBA will often nd some really bizarre failure modes,
that are completely unrealistic – like those:
The above hopper is loaded with pressure acting to the

outside. You don’t have to be an expert to see that
something is off here. There are relatively thin plates
between stiffeners, and those would enter the membrane

state in reality. But since LBA “doesn’t know that” it
produces such funky instability failure modes that are
completely impossible to occur in reality.
Sadly, this is not all. Since buckling is a geometrically

nonlinear phenomenon, LBA can often be wrong. While for
beams it does a pretty good job, I wouldn’t trust LBA
outcomes for shells! Sadly, LBA will often overpredict
capacity – sometimes by a big margin!
In both of the above cases, you will need a nonlinear

analysis to deal with such problems.
To sum it up:
LBA can warn you that you have stability problems in

your structure. Sadly, it cannot take nonlinear
geometry into account (among other effects), which
results in some problems. If nonlinear geometry would
impact the outcomes you may either get a weird
“impossible” failure modes… or LBA will greatly
overestimate the capacity of your shell model (and
this is a real problem!).
This is why in a lot of cases (i.e. shell structures) you

should use nonlinear analysis instead!
Want to learn more about LBA? De nitelly read this!
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Nonlinear geometry in analysis
We already discussed Linear Static (usually denoted as LA

for Linear Analysis) and Linear Bifurcation Analysis (LBA).
Those would be the “linear” analysis as far as geometry is
concerned. It is only fair to discuss the nonlinear approach
now!
Simply put nonlinear geometry can take into account all

those effects I just described. In a pretty extreme situation,
the outcomes may look like this:
What the analysis does, is that it divides the loads to small

portions (called increments), and then it applies those
increments to your model “one by one”. Thanks to this, the
analysis “see” how the model behave and take all the
nonlinearities into account.
This is a completely different league of analysis –

possibilities are really awesome! But… (there is always a
“but” right?) setting up a nonlinear analysis, and
computing itself takes much more time. In order to include
membrane and stability effects, you have to pay in
preparation and learning time. Still, I think it’s well worth
the investment! Especially since you can later animate
your outcomes like this (which is super cool for Customer
presentations… not to mention blogging :P):
Nonlinear geometry in a nutshell:
Nonlinear buckling (as geometrically nonlinear

analysis is often called) takes into account membran
effects. It can also analyze stability failures (if set up
properly). Simply put, it’s a way more powerful
algorithm than Linear Analysis (also including LBA).
The problem is, that the setup and computing time

takes much longer than in case of linear analysis. Not
to mention that you actually need to own software that
is capable of doing such an analysis… and you need to
know how to set it up!
Want to learn more about linear and

nonlinear buckling?
De nitely check my free online course! I think it will be a

perfect t for you!
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Linear or nonlinear material

All right, now we are talking!
I get the feeling that nonlinear material is something that

you initially thought when I started discussing nonlinear
analysis… and for a good reason!
There is only one assumption I want to discuss here. It

adds to the 2 assumptions for linear geometry we already
discussed:
Assumption 3: Relation between stress and strain in

the material is linear
This doesn’t sound too bad, does it? Sadly, I think this
assumption is responsible for a lot of woes – I believe it is
mostly responsible for the fact that people don’t trust their
FEA outcomes. It also causes most problems in analyzing
FEA outcomes and drawing conclusions from those!
Let’s take a closer look!
Material straight like a line!
Firstly, let’s take a look at a typical strain-stress curve. This

is the chart that shows you what is the relation between
stress and strain in the material. If you ever studied
anything slightly connected with steel structures you most
likely saw this:
This is how typically mild steel behaves. If you would put a

steel specimen into a hydraulic press for a tension test…
basically this is what you would get. To make it easier to
imagine just switch stress for load and strain for
elongation and you are ne : )
The problem is, that modeling such a complex behavior

takes time and effort. And it’s relatively easy to see this
beautiful straight elastic part of the chart. I don’t know
about you, but it sure does make me want to use a linear
approach!
This is a really neat approach. We don’t have to “care” for

all the nonlinearities, while within the linear zone, the
answers we get are just perfect! Awesome stuff!
But you already know where I’m going with this… After all,
we can “enter” the nonlinear part of the chart when the
strain in our material gets high enough. Then the problems
begin.
Initially, this may not look like a big issue. I mean a rule
could be made that “if I ever get stress higher than yield
this is a failure”. You know the reasoning being that if a big
portion of your model will yield it would fail anyway. But
there is a big issue with this approach, that comes with
more complex geometries than a at steel piece: stress
concentrations!
Concentrate on the solution
Whenever you have a stiffener end abruptly in your model,

or maybe a weird opening, those regions produce higher
strains. But those are extremely localized to very small
areas. And the question is… how to interpret outcomes in
such cases? Below you can see a model that at most is
barely loaded at all… but over the stiffener, the stress
concentrates to a total value of 1800MPa:
So, did this part fail? Perhaps, after all, the dark blue is
around 450MPa. But since this is a linear analysis we can
easily scale this down. What if the maximal stress would
be “only” 900MPa, while the dark blue would be 225MPa
for a steel grade S355?
On one hand, the “average stress” (however you wish to

de ne it here) would be way below yield. On the same note
that “stupid” dot over the stiffener would be almost 3
times over the yield. How to interpret outcomes in such a
case?
The short answer is… you can’t!
Linear analysis is not meant to be used like that. Sure, you

could argue a lot about whether the stress in the
concentration is “allowable or not” but in the end, it would
be a judgment call. If you would like to be “certain”, you
would have to use nonlinear material!
If you don’t believe me, ask yourself such questions:
Assuming such stress is acceptable (this part would

not fail in nonlinear analysis BTW), how big this “red
zone” would have to be in order for me to consider
this a failure?
How do I wish to analyze the size of the zone in

order to prove that it is “still acceptable” while a
slightly bigger one is “not acceptable” anymore?
What if the stress would be 10% higher… would this

still be ok? How about 20%? What is the limit stress
in such a case and how can I calculate it?
You see, those questions have no answers when you use

Linear Analysis. Only with a nonlinear material, you can
make such calls – and this is the “power” of the nonlinear
analysis in this case.
To sum it up:
Linear analysis is spot on with stresses when those

are below the yield point of the material (or other
nonlinear behaviors for the matter). However, if the
strains in the material are so high then you would
enter the “nonlinear” part of the stress-strain
relationship… linear outcomes start to go “dumb”.
Pretty fast they are “outrageously stupid”. Sadly, such
high strains appear in most models in small areas
around details due to concentrations.
It’s basically impossible to judge if the element

capacity is ok based on such outcomes.
This is why you need to use nonlinear material when

dealing with stresses higher than yield!
Nonlinear material saves the day!
In case of stability issues, we could use LBA to at least

“guess” if the troubles are big or not. Here, there is no
“secondary linear analysis” to help us out.
The only thing you could really do in such a case is to use

nonlinear material. Truth be told there are a LOT of
different material models. I’ve described 4 that I consider
“most commonly used” in this article.
Let’s discuss a very simple case here: a bilinear material:

As you can see above, the material takes the elastic

(linear) and plastic properties of the material into account.
Such a material would be called “bi-linear” for obvious
reasons. But there are 2 approaches you may have with it.
I guess you most likely heard about “work hardening” – the
fact that some materials (like steel and other metals)
actually strengthen under high strains.
You may or may not want to use it in your model. Usually,

in my design, I don’t want to go into the strengthening
zone of the material. I was taught at university that this is
a “desperate” zone if you are doing a new design (but it
has its uses when you need to strengthen something that
already exists). In such a case my material model would
look like this:
But if I would expect very high strains (“climbing” the

hardening slope) I might use such a material model:
This way, I can take the work hardening into account (in a
simpli ed way). I usually go with no hardening, but I guess
this will comes down to what you are trying to do. In my
models, where strains are very localized (due to stress
concentrations as we discussed above) the difference
between those two materials is minimal – I actually
checked that once.
Nonlinear material summary
In essence nonlinear material just “makes your life

easier”. You don’t have to wonder if the stress you got
in that pesky stress concentration is too high or not.
Instead, you can just check plastic strain, and see if
there was any possibility of plastic collapse and you
are ne. Both are “clearly” de ned so judgment calls
are rarely needed.
Of course, there is a downside as well. As with all

nonlinear analysis setting the analysis up takes a bit
longer, and computing de nitely takes longer. It seems
you just have to wait for the better results : )
Want to know how nonlinear material works? Take a

read!
Do I need nonlinear analysis

in my case?
I want to wrap it up with the most common question. Now
you know the differences between linear and nonlinear
approach, but the question remains: how about my case?
It’s impossible to discuss this in one post, so I’ve made a

whole series about this topic on my blog. You will nd
there not only a owchart that will guide you in the choice,
but also a complete guide on how to approach each step
of the way. I’m sure you will nd that useful!
DO I NEED DO I NEED DO I NEED

NONLINEAR NONLINEAR CONTACT
GEOMETRY? MATERIAL? IN MY
ANALYSIS?
Common questions about

linear vs nonlinear FEA
Is this stress above yield acceptable?
Well… there is no answer to that. Firstly, the stress above

yield in the linear analysis just indicates that there will be
yielding involved in reality. This in itself is not a tragedy,
but it doesn’t mean this is always acceptable. My favorite
example is:
Imagine you have 2 specimen. First is a rod under

uniform tension, the second is the same rode under
bending. Is yield acceptable?
Well for the rode in tension it’s not! After all the entire
cross-section is under the same stress. If you allow it
to yield, the rod will fail.
On another hand in bending only the outer parts of the

same cross-section will yield. In such a case you are
most likely ne, and this is perfectly allowable in
design codes. Even more, when you use the “plastic
section modulus” in design (default in most codes for
steel elements in class 1 and 2) then you allow your
cross-section to yield substantially!
What the above shows? It only shows that whether stress

higher than yield in the linear analysis is allowed, depends
on what model are you analyzing! There is no one- ts-all
answer! Remember, any time you are in doubt… just use
the nonlinear material and be certain!
Is using linear geometry safe?
No, not really. I can imagine where this comes from… after
all, you get higher deformations and bigger stresses when
elements can’t enter membrane state. For those,
outcomes would be “worse” in LA. But don’t forget that
those elements are attached to something! If they will
enter the membrane stare a big horizontal force will be
applied at supports (and you won’t get it in LA!). This
means that you will be missing a major load component.
On another hand, if you make an element that “survives”

bending in LA… most likely it won’t enter a membrane
state. So there is something to be said about that as well.
If the deformations are small* you should be ne with LA,
as long as buckling is not an issue.
* I know “small” is not extremely precise. Most likely you

have a code to follow that should de ne “allowable
deformations”. I think those could be treated as “small
enough”. If you don’t have such a code my wild guess
would be something like “small means length of the
element divided by 300” or something similar. It’s best to
make some tests with linear and nonlinear analysis and

estimate your limits yourself of course : )
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30 Comments
MEHANI Youcef March 5, 2019 at 7:44 am - Reply
Nice .
Łukasz Skotny March 5, 2019 at 10:57 am - Reply
I’m glad that you like it : )
Luis March 16, 2019 at 9:19 pm - Reply
Really nice article!
I’m really happy that you like it Luis!

Thanks for the comment : )
Nasreldin November 7, 2020 at 11:50 am - Reply
Thank you .Great article !!!
Łukasz Skotny November 9, 2020 at 8:10

am - Reply
Thank you!
I’m really glad that you like it 🙂
All the best!

Ł
Rahul shelar August 31, 2019 at 5:28 pm - Reply
Well explained.
Łukasz Skotny August 31, 2019 at 6:36 pm - Reply
Thank you Rahul!
I’m really glad that you like it 🙂
All the best

Ł
Manish Kumar Tiwari September 6, 2019 at 7:27 am - Reply
Awesome!!!!!!! Getting lot of help from Your

Blogs……………..
Łukasz Skotny September 6, 2019 at 7:46 am -

Reply
I’m happy that you like them Manish!
All the best

Ł
Duc Nguyen Huu September 6, 2019 at 8:57 am - Reply
All your information and explanations are really

great and usefully.
Łukasz Skotny September 6, 2019 at 11:55 am -

Reply
Thank you 🙂
I’m really glad that you like the post 🙂
All the best!

Ł
Robert October 10, 2019 at 1:05 pm - Reply
Hi Lukasz
Great explanation!!
I have a question on non-linear materials. I’m
running a non-linear simulation on Ansys using
a bi-linear material with no strain hardening
(zero tangent modulus). I’m getting stress
results above the speci ed yield point of the
material. Why is that?
Thanks again Lukasz
Łukasz Skotny October 10, 2019 at 7:59 pm - Reply
Hey Rob!
Thanks for writing. Have you checked how

stress is averaged? Try to nd display
options for your outcomes and “set” the
display to “non-averaged” outcomes. Let
me know if this will help 🙂
All the best

Ł
Angus Ramsay November 10, 2020 at 12:48

am - Reply
The reason for this is that the stress

is only constrained at the
integration or Gauss points. In
ANSYS there is an option for either
extrapolating Gauss point stresses
to the nodes, in which case you
might see yield being violated, or
else to copy the Gauss point
stresses to the nodes. If you select
the latter option (which is not the
default) then you should see that
the yield constraints are satis ed.
Łukasz Skotny November 10, 2020
at 10:19 am - Reply
It’s such a blessing to have

you around Angus! Thank you
for the clari cation!
All the best!

Ł
Milad October 25, 2019 at 10:35 am - Reply
Very interesting article. Thanks a lot.
I like to ask one question:
You mentioned ” you can just check plastic

strain, and see if there was any possibility of
plastic collapse and you are ne”, how would I
know there is a plastic collapse? I am already
over the yield since I am in the non-linear region.
Isn’t any strain there a plastic strain?
Łukasz Skotny October 26, 2019 at 7:10 am - Reply
Hey Milad!
I’m so glad that you like the post!
Yes, if you are beyond yield all additional

strain is a plastic strain, and there is a
limit to how much of that you can have.
This is “check 1”.
But, if your model yields signi cantly (so
big area has yielded, but regardless of
how small plastic strains are… you can be
“just beyond yield but on a big area) your
model gets “softer”. Since yielding
assumes theyre can be free strain
(without increasing stresses)
deformations can increase without
changes in the load. This can cause a
failure mode not related to the values of a
plastic strain called plastic collapse. You
know things like elephant food buckling in

silos etc. This is a different failure model,
and should be consiedered “check 2”. In
other words, checking for plastic strain
alone isn’t enough, unless of course,
those happen to be super localized in a
very small area, then you’re ok.
Hope this helps!

Ł
Claudiu December 14, 2019 at 2:16 pm - Reply
Luk, I found your website very useful, after a few

good years of FEA work! It was a humbling
experience and I’ll return with pleasure here!
Thanks much for the effort!
Łukasz Skotny December 14, 2019 at 4:57 pm -

Reply
I’m really glad that you like my work

Claudiu!
All the best

Ł
Reza February 11, 2020 at 7:50 am - Reply
Hi,
Thanks for providing comprehensive

information about linear and non-linear analysis.
We design and build hydraulic system and

recently we have been approached by a client
asking to design a hydraulic system. They are
building a big structure (26 meter long and 3
meter wide) and they are asking us to design a
hydraulic system which is installed under the
structure to absorb the shock applied to the
structure by dropping a 20 tonne mass from 20
meter.
We are using a software to see how the

hydraulic system reacts when the shock applied
to the structure so we need to do a combined
model including the structure and the hydraulic
system.
The software provider is asking us to give them
the natural frequencies of the structure to
decide if we need to do linear analysis or non-
linear analysis for the combined model.
I read your explanation and couldn’t see
anything related between natural frequencies
and linear/non-linear analysis. Can you please
assist.
Łukasz Skotny February 12, 2020 at 4:42 pm - Reply
Dear Reza!
First of all, I think you are lacking a lot of

data… that won’t be easy to come by! I
mean, what is the mass that is thrown and
how rigid the structure is. You see, if the
“hit” is short than the deceleration (from
“falling speed” to “zero”) is really high, so…
mass times deceleration (aka Force!) is
also huge! On the same note, if this is a
soft material that i.e. crumbles on impact
etc. then the deceleration is lower, as the
time of the impact is longer. This leads to
a lower impact force.
To my best knowledge, this doesn’t have

anything to to with natural frequencies…
unless there are a lot of such masses,
that hit the structure at short intervals or
something. Plus, I’m not sure how they
wish to do a linear analysis of such a
problem. I mean what? They will apply a
dynamic factor? And who will tell what the
value of such a factor could be? This is
pure guesswork unless of course they
already did several of such structures and

measured stresses during impact etc.
Hope this helps 🙂

Ł
Mandar March 14, 2020 at 4:49 am - Reply
Outstanding article. The illustrations are so

clear and the sections are broken up into easy
to follow sections. Also, the section summaries
with examples is excellent. I love it when
someone can explain a complex subject so
simply!! Thank you 🙂
Hey Mandar!
Thank you! I’m really glad that you like the

post 🙂
All the best!

Ł
Somsubhro March 30, 2020 at 7:38 am - Reply
Awesome post!! Thank you for this.
Łukasz Skotny March 30, 2020 at 12:20 pm - Reply
Thanks Mate!
I’m glad that you like it 🙂
All the best

Ł
Dev October 27, 2020 at 7:40 am - Reply
Great article mate. I like the diagrams.
Łukasz Skotny October 27, 2020 at 12:33 pm -
Reply
Thank you Dev!
It’s very nice to hear that you like my stuff!
All the best!

Ł
Angus Ramsay November 10, 2020 at 12:50 am - Reply
As usual Lukasz, another excellent and

pleasurable read 🙂
Łukasz Skotny November 10, 2020 at 10:20 am -

Reply
Thank you Angus,
Hearing praise from a specialist like you

really means a lot 🙂
All the best!

Ł
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3/1/2021 The Difference Between Linear and Nonlinear FEA?

START HERE! LOG IN ENGLISH 

CONSULTING COURSES PORTFOLIO BLOG CONTACT

Test your FEA skills! only 3 min.

The Difference Between

not predict buckling or membrane state (or do it very 

Linear or nonlinear geometry

nonlinear FEA. You see, when you use linear analysis

structure behaves (i.e. noting enters membrane

Assumption 2: There is no stability failure

FEA Design Tips

But it’s actually not so simple to de ect so much. If the • Boundary

The second problem is with stability. As you most likely FEMAP

marketing materials. More

Start learning FEA today!

In essence, everything that is slender (thin and relatively

Sometimes, buckling can catch even experienced

LBA to the rescue!

Luckily for us, there are other analyses we can perform to

But there is a big problem in this paradise. As I already told

The above hopper is loaded with pressure acting to the

between stiffeners, and those would enter the membrane

Sadly, this is not all. Since buckling is a geometrically

In both of the above cases, you will need a nonlinear

LBA can warn you that you have stability problems in

This is why in a lot of cases (i.e. shell structures) you

Want to learn more about LBA? De nitelly read this!

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Nonlinear geometry in analysis

We already discussed Linear Static (usually denoted as LA

Simply put nonlinear geometry can take into account all

What the analysis does, is that it divides the loads to small

This is a completely different league of analysis –

Nonlinear geometry in a nutshell:

Nonlinear buckling (as geometrically nonlinear

The problem is, that the setup and computing time

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Linear or nonlinear material

I get the feeling that nonlinear material is something that

There is only one assumption I want to discuss here. It

Assumption 3: Relation between stress and strain in

Let’s take a closer look!

Material straight like a line!

Firstly, let’s take a look at a typical strain-stress curve. This

This is how typically mild steel behaves. If you would put a

The problem is, that modeling such a complex behavior

This is a really neat approach. We don’t have to “care” for

Concentrate on the solution

Whenever you have a stiffener end abruptly in your model,

On one hand, the “average stress” (however you wish to

The short answer is… you can’t!

Linear analysis is not meant to be used like that. Sure, you

If you don’t believe me, ask yourself such questions:

Assuming such stress is acceptable (this part would

How do I wish to analyze the size of the zone in

slightly bigger one is “not acceptable” anymore?

What if the stress would be 10% higher… would this

You see, those questions have no answers when you use

Linear analysis is spot on with stresses when those

It’s basically impossible to judge if the element