A Guide to Handle

Nonlinear Material
in Your Analysis
This guide is made for non-experienced FEA users. It provides
basic knowledge needed to start analyzing plasticity in materials.
Experienced FEA analysts can also use this guide to get used to
the NFX workflow.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Nonlinear Materials in the Industry.......

Nonlinear Material Types.......

Engineering Stress Strain curve....

True Stress Strain curve.

Converting Engineering Data to True Data..

Work Hardening...

Why is nonlinear data required in FEA?

10

Nonlinear input in midas NFX

11

Nonlinear analysis types in midas NFX ... 13

Examples... 16

Nonlinear Materials in
the Industry

Nonlinear Materials are omnipresent in various industries which

requires high resistance, light materials and components.
For example: Automotive, Marine, Defense, Aerospace, Heavy
Machinery, Consumer Goods, Electronics, Oil and Gas, Medical
Industry, etc.

Page 3

Nonlinear Material Types

Nonlinear Materials can be represented using different types of

models and rules.
Material types: Elasto-plastic, Hyper-elastic
Yield Criterions : Von Mises (Metals)
Nonlinear entries: Stress strain curve, Plastic hardening curve, perfect plastic
Hardening Rules: Isotropic, Kinematic, Combined
Dependence: Temperature, Strain rate

Page 4

Engineering Stress
Strain Curve

Monotonic tension stress-strain properties are usually reported

in handbooks and are used in many specifications.
Monotonic behavior is obtained from a tension test where a
specimen with circular or rectangular cross sections within the
uniform gauge length is subjected to a monotonically increasing
tensile force until it fractures.
Engineering stress S from a uniaxial test is defined by dividing
the axial force by the original cross sectional area.

Sy - yield strength
Su - ultimate tensile strength

Snom - Engineering Stress, nominal

A0

- Original cross sectional area

- Instantaneous gage length

nom - Engineering Strain, nominal

Page 5

True Stress Strain Curve

True stress sigma is defined by dividing the axial force by the

instantaneous cross sectional area.
True stress in tension is higher than engineering stress
because the cross section area decreases during the loading.
f - true fracture strength
f - true fracture strain or ductility

- true stress
- true strain
A - instantaneous cross sectional area

- instantaneous gage length

L0 - original gage length

For constant volume up to necking assumption:

The following relationships can then be derived:

Page 6

Converting Engineering
Data to True Data

Engineering data can be

easily converted to True
Data.

600

Relationships between
true stresses - strains and
engineering ones are
described using the
following formulas. These
equations are valid up to
necking.

300

500
400

200
100
0
0

0.00105

0.024

0.045

0.1

0.14

0.19

Nominal Stress
[MPa]

Nominal
Strain

True Stress
[MPa]

Total True Strain

Plastic Strain

nom

nom

nom (1+nom)

ln (1+nom)

tot-true/E

2,23E+02

0,00105

2,23E+02

0,0010494491

0,0

2,80E+02

0,024

2,87E+02

0,0237165266

0,0223668734

3,66E+02

0,045

3,82E+02

0,0440168854

0,0422177119

4,00E+02

0,1

4,38E+02

0,0953101798

0,0932472638

4,40E+02

0,14

4,98E+02

0,1310282624

0,1286850559

4,80E+02

0,19

5,63E+02

0,1739533071

0,1713000674

Page 7

Work Hardening

Work hardening is a consequence of plastic deformation, a

permanent change in shape. This is different to elastic
deformation, which is reversible.
Most materials do not exhibit only plastic deformation or elastic
deformation, but rather a combination of the two. The following
discussion mostly applies to metals, especially steels, which
are well studied. Work hardening occurs most notably for
ductile materials such as metals. Ductility is the ability of a
material to undergo plastic deformations before fracture (E.g.:
bending a steel rod until it finally breaks).

B
Loading
A

Unloading

C
0

Page 8

When describing Work hardening, Hollomon's equation is

mostly used. Hollomon's equation is a powerful law which
describes the relationship between the stress and the
amount of plastic strain it used to generate the hardening
curve of a nonlinear material.

= K (p)n
K - strength coefficient (stress intercept at p = 1)
n - strain hardening exponent (slope of the line)
p - plastic strain

Properties of Steel

Page 9

Material:
Steel

Su
MPa/(ksi)

E
GPa/ksi 103

K/K
MPa/(ksi)

n/n

1010

331/(48)

203/29.5

534/867
(78)/(126)

0.185/ 0.244

1020

441/(64)

203/29.5

738/1962
(107)/(284)

0.190/ 0.321

1038c

582/(84)

201/29.5

1106/1340
(160)/(195)

0.259/ 0.220

Why is nonlinear data

required in FEA

A wide range of products in our life involve nonlinear

materials and manufacturing processes. A good example
is desirable work hardening.
Desirable work hardening occurs in metalworking
processes that induce plastic deformation to exact a
shape change.

Examples:
- Rolling
- Bending
- Shearing
- Drawing

Page 10

Nonlinear input in NFX

To assign material nonlinearity in NFX, you can choose to use

stress-strain curve or plastic hardening curve.
Stress-Strain Curve definition takes into account all the
material curves including elastic and plastic domains.

Stress-Strain Curve

Page 11

Plastic Hardening Curve definition takes into account only the

plastic domain, so the initial value should be equal to the yield
stress.

Plastic Hardening Curve

Page 12

Nonlinear analysis Types

in NFX
Velocity, Acceleration

Static Analysis: time does not play any role.

Time

Velocity, Acceleration

Dynamic Analysis: takes into account the time by

considering fast changing events (load/displacements) and
inertia.

Time

Velocity or Acceleration

Quasi-Static Analysis: is a type of dynamic analysis which

is solved using static loads.

Page 13

Time

In Implicit analysis, the calculation of current quantities in one time

step is based on the quantities calculated during the previous time step.
This is called the Euler Time Integration Scheme. Using this scheme,
the solution remains stable even if large time steps are taken. This is
also called an unconditionally stable scheme. The disadvantage is that
this algorithm requires you to inverse the stiffness matrix and this is
computationally intensive, especially when nonlinearities are present.
In Explicit analysis, the inversion of the complex stiffness matrix can
be avoided, and only the mass matrix [M] has to be inverted. When
lower order elements are used (always recommended in explicit), the
mass matrix is a lumped matrix, or a diagonal matrix, whose inversion
is a single step process, hence this is very easily done. The
disadvantage is that the Euler Time integration scheme is not used in
explicit, and thus the solution is not unconditionally stable and very
small time steps have to be used.

Nonlinear Static
Nonlinear Quasi-Static
Nonlinear Implicit Dynamic
Used to solve true static
equilibrium
Nonlinear Explicit Dynamic
Used to solve true dynamic
equilibrium
Sequential Nonlinear
Implicit + Explicit Coupled

Page 14

In midas NFX all of the Static, Quasi-Static, Dynamic

analysis types can be performed in the functions for the
problem considered

Static

Structural problems

Quasi-Static

Metal forming

Dynamic

Impact problems

IMPLICIT METHOD
EXPLICIT METHOD

Page 15

Examples

Roll Former -Nonlinear Implicit Analysis

Page 16

Examples

High speed solenoid driven rivet simulation

- Nonlinear Explicit Analysis

Page 17

Now you are

ready to go !
Please contact us if you have any
questions during your trial:
Email: info@midasfea.com
Telephone: +44 (0) 1908 776717