LS-DYNA Theory Manual Material Models

Figure 19.69.2. Force versus displacement as orifices are covered at a constant relative velocity.
Only the linear velocity term is active.

Material Model 70: Hydraulic/Gas Damper

This special purpose element represents a combined hydraulic and gas-filled damper
which has a variable orifice coefficient. A schematic of the damper is shown in Figure 19.70.1.
Dampers of this type are sometimes used on buffers at the end of railroad tracks and as aircraft
undercarriage shock absorbers. This material can be used only as a discrete beam element.

Figure 19.70.1. Schematic of Hydraulic/Gas damper.

As the damper is compressed two actions contribute to the force that develops. First, the
gas is adiabatically compressed into a smaller volume. Secondly, oil is forced through an orifice.
A profiled pin may occupy some of the cross-sectional area of the orifice; thus, the orifice area
available for the oil varies with the stroke. The force is assumed proportional to the square of the
velocity and inversely proportional to the available area. The equation for this element is:

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Material Models LS-DYNA Theory Manual

­° § V ·2 ª § C · n º ½°
F = SCLF ⋅ ® K h ¨ ¸ + « P0 ¨ 0
¸ − P » ⋅ Ap¾ (19.70.1)
C −S ¹
a
a
¯° © 0 ¹ «¬ © 0 »¼ ¿°

where S is the element deflection and V is the relative velocity across the element.

Material Model 71: Cable

This material can be used only as a discrete beam element. The force, F , generated by
the cable is nonzero only if the cable is in tension. The force is given by:

F = K ⋅ max(ΔL, 0.) (19.71.1)

where ΔL is the change in length

ΔL = current length − ( initial length − offset ) (19.71.2)

and the stiffness is defined as:

E ⋅ area
K= (19.71.3)
( initial length − offset )
The area and offset are defined on either the cross section or element cards in the LS-DYNA
input. For a slack cable the offset should be input as a negative length. For an initial tensile force
the offset should be positive. If a load curve is specified, the Young’s modulus will be ignored
and the load curve will be used instead. The points on the load curve are defined as engineering
stress versus engineering strain, i.e., the change in length over the initial length. The unloading
behavior follows the loading.

Material Model 73: Low Density Viscoelastic Foam

This viscoelastic foam model is available to model highly compressible viscous foams.
The hyperelastic formulation of this model follows that of material 57.
Rate effects are accounted for through linear viscoelasticity by a convolution integral of
the form

∂ε kl
σ ijr = ³ gijkl ( t − τ )
t
dτ (19.73.1)
0 ∂τ

where gijkl (t − τ ) is the relaxation function. The stress tensor, σ ijr , augments the stresses
determined from the foam, σ ijf ; consequently, the final stress, σ ij , is taken as the summation of
the two contributions:

σ ij = σ ijf + σ ijr . (19.73.2)

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