11.

0 NON-LINEAR ANALYSIS Introduction The majority of engineering problems which are dealt with in the present undergraduate structures course are linear in nature. That is to say, the response of the structure or material is directly proportional to the load applied. Most engineers are familiar with Hooke s law which is illustrated by the simple spring problem shown. In this, Hooke discovered a simple linear K relationship between the applied force and F the resulting deflection. Thus, the deflection u, can be easily calculated by dividing F by K. This is valid so long as the spring remains linear-elastic and the deflections are such that they do not cause the spring to break or yield. Simply, if the force doubles, so then will the deflection. However, many real physical situations exhibit a behaviour where

F = K.u

F K.u

and these are

described as non-linear problems. For example, bending a staple or paper clip, stretching a rubber seal, crushing a drinks can so that it buckles. These cases all exhibit large deformations and in some cases, inelastic material behaviour. Three Types of Non-linearity There are three major types of non-linearity (i) Geometric Non-linearity - where large deformations and large strains may be present. Also included is snap-through buckling. If a structure experiences geometric non-linearity, its changing geometric configuration will cause the structure to respond in a non-linear manner. (ii) Material Non-linearity - where plasticity, creep or viscoelasticity is present in the material model. The influencing factors on material property behaviour include the load history (as in elasto-plastic response), environmental conditions (temperature) and the amount of time in which the load is applied (as in creep response). (iii) Boundary Non-linearity (or Changing Status Conditions) - where a status-dependant problem exists, for example, a cable which is slack or taut; a roller support that is in contact or not. Situations in which contact occurs are common to many different non-linear applications. Contact analysis, therefore, forms a distinctive and important subset to the category of boundary non-linearities.

Metal Forming Processes

Bearing Contact

Crash (Impact) Problems

Of course, it is possible to have any combinations of the above non-linear situations. Therefore it is the responsibility of the analyst to check for evidence of possible non-linear behaviour. Phenomena in real structures such as permanent deformation, gross changes in geometry necking, thinning, cracking, buckling and stress values which exceed the elastic limits of the material, all indicate the possibility of non-linear behaviour.

Non-linear Force-Displacement

Non-linear Stress-Strain

It is worth noting that non-linear problems are inherently more complex to analyse than linear problems and that the principle of superposition no longer applied. There are a number of reasons why engineers avoid undertaking non-linear problems. Firstly, in some situations it can sometimes be difficult to recognise the problem; in other cases there may be a lack of resources or inappropriate FE software. Even when the time, money and tools are available, the analysis cannot be undertaken due to a lack of necessary material properties or unclear loads and boundary conditions, for example, multi-body contact with unknown contact locations. Non-linear Solutions One approach to non-linear solutions is to break the load up into a series of load increments which can be applied either over several load steps or over several substeps within a load step. At the completion of each incremental solution, the program adjusts the stiffness matrix to reflect the non-linear changes in the structural stiffness before proceeding to the next load increment. Unfortunately, a purely incremental solution inevitably accumulates error within each load increment causing the final results to be out of equilibrium. This can be overcome by

using a Newton-Raphson method which drives the solution to equilibrium convergence, within some tolerance limit)
F calculated response error F

true response

Pure Incremental Solution

Newton-Raphson Solution

Before each solution, the Newton-Raphson method evaluates the out-of-balance load, which is the difference between the restoring forces (i.e. the loads corresponding to the element stresses) and the applied loads. The program performs a linear solution using the out-ofbalance loads and checks for convergence. If the convergence criterion is not satisfied, the outof-balance load is re-evaluated, the stiffness matrix updated and a new solution is obtained. The iterative procedure continues until the problem converges. A number of numerical tools, adaptive descent, line searching, automatic time stepping and bisection can be activated to help convergence. If convergence cannot be achieved, then the program may proceed to the next load increment or terminate, according to the analyst s instruction. Usage of these tools requires much consideration and is generally problem dependant. Generally, AUTOTS should be on and bi-section will occur, if required, as a result of this feature. Other tools will not be employed a this stage.
LOAD Load step 2 Substeps Load step 1

TIME 0 0.5 1.0 1.5 1.75 2.0

Load Steps, Substeps and Time Increments

Load steps are the positions on the load history and are similar to those points point a dynamic analysis. Substeps are these fractions of load applied within load step which must achieve convergence before the next increment load is applied. All substep must be complete before the next load step is attempted. The use of the term, Time , pertains to position in the nonlinear analysis and relates to the fraction of load rather than real time in seconds. One point worth noting about sub-steps. When using multiple substeps there is a need to achieve a balance between accuracy and economy. That is, more substeps (ie smaller time step sizes) usually result in better accuracy but at the cost of increased run times. The number of substeps can be controlled by specifying the actual number of substeps or the size of the time steps. In addition, by using automatic time stepping, the program adjusts the time steps size needed, based in the structure s behaviour and response. This will give a better balance between accuracy and economy. Convergence Criteria With FEA, the analyst always has the responsibility of deciding what constitutes a successful analysis. With non-linear analysis, the analysis must also determine what features of the nonlinear problem must be satisfied before a successful solution can be reached. Since the approach requires a number of successful linear analyses, which approximate to the true nonlinear input curve, some convergence criterion must be specified within a run, such that the program can determine whether the amount of load applied can meet the required criterion. If it does not, then an unconvergened solution will result. If automatic timestepping is applied and during the run, the solution does not appear to be approaching convergence, then the increment of load for that substep will BISECT and half of that value will be applied. It is worth thinking about what quantity is driving your non-linear problem when equilibrium is being reached. The choice of convergence can often be the most difficult part of a non-linear analysis. When establishing convergence tolerances, two main points must be addressed. Firstly, on what basis is convergence achieved; loads, deflections, or both? Secondly, deflections can be translations or rotations and since rotations are usually smaller, should different criteria be applied for each displacement. ANSYS assumes a 0.001 convergence tolerance by default.

11.1 NON-LINEAR ANALYSIS WITH ANSYS Generally the non-linear analysis will be static [ANTYPE, STATIC]. If large deformations or large strains are expected, then [NLGEOM,ON] is employed. Not all non-linear analyses will produce large deformations. If stress stiffening effects are present, use

The main options which the analysis has control over are the load and time definition. The ANSYS program identifies the load steps and substeps by the use of the [TIME, value] command. Use of this command defines values of time which are tied to some actual physical quantity such as real time , applied pressure etc. this command specifies the time at the end of the load step. The size of the timesteps are defined by the DELTIM command [DELTIM,START,MIN,MAX] where START is the starting value of time and MIN and MAX are the minimum and maximum values of time permitted. Auto time stepping will use START as its initial value. Stepped or ramped loads can be applied by using KBC, 0 or 1. By default, all loads are ramped. A NONLINEAR CASE STUDY: Elasto-Plastic Limit Analysis of Value Body Using the example of the 3D solid valve body as defined in earlier studies, it is of interest to examine what happens if the loading is applied such that the material is subject to stresses beyond the yield lit. In such cases, the material behaviour is non-linear. Indeed, if the material behaviour becomes plastic, then there must be some limiting value of load (the LIMIT LOAD or specifically for this problem, the LIMIT PRESSURE) whereby the whole wall is plastic and loading beyond this limiting value of load will induce gross plastic deformation. For this example, it is assumed the material is elastic-perfectly plastic in behaviour. This means that once yield has been reached, there is no load carrying capability available for the material which has yielded. The stress for the material has been specified as 300N/mm2 and Von-Mises stresses will be used as the output quantity. The material data is input via a non-linear table which can be found using the menu system. The appropriate commands comprise: TB,BKIN, 1 which defines a data table for a bi-linear kinematic hardening material model and TBDAT, 1,value,gradient, which for the present case in TBDAT,1,300,100 where 100 is the plastic modulus in N/mm2. The gradient beyond yield is similar to the linear gradient which is, of course, Young s Modulus. For steel, this is usually 2 around 207,000N/mm however since the material is perfectly plastic, a small gradient is input to avoid numerical problems although this is problem dependant. From previous work, an applied load of 2N/mm2 gave a maximum stress of around 17N/mm2. Therefore, by proportion, a pressure of 36N/mm2 results in a stress of just over 300N/mm2 which is the first yield point. The analysis is performed in twoload steps, the first to yield, the second to establish the limit load. The model contains 884 solid 45 elements and comprises 1458 nodes. The CP time recorded by ANSYS is 2340 secs on a P200MMX with 32MB memory.

The material curve can be graphed by ANSYS as follows:

The solution is executed and after the first load step (TIME,36) a large pressure of 100N/mm2 is applied. It is anticipated that this will cause failure since this is almost three times the load until the solution becomes numerically unstable due to gross plastic deformations or strains and there are small quantities within the stiffness matrices such that the solution stops. In this case, the last successful solution is presented with a 999999 load step number. Typing SET,LIST in POST1 after solution shows the index of data sets stored for the run. ***** INDEX OF DATA SETS ON RESULTS FILE***** SET 1 2 3 4 5 6 TIME/FREQ 36.000 40.923 45.846 53.846 57.846 100.00 LOAD STEP 1 2 2 2 2 2 SUBSTEP 1 1 2 3 4 999999 CUMULATIVE 1 3 4 7 22 55

Solid 45 Mesh

Von Mises Stresses at 1st Yield

Von Mises Stresses at p=40.9N/mm2

Von Mises Stresses at p=45.85N/mm2

Von Mises Stresses at p=53.85N/mm2 Von Mises Stresses at Limit Load=57.85N/mm2 It is worth noting the growth of the plastic zone and the movement of the plastic front. It moves through the valve wall at the crotch corner, but once it is almost halfway through, it progresses down the sphere much faster than up the cylinder. The total solution time for this simple problem is around 35 minutes so if you are performing nonlinear FEA, be prepared to spend considerable time checking your input and ensuring you are doing the right thing!!!! (Now 8-10 mins on a P700!)

VALVE_F.INP D H Nash
/CONFIG,NLCONTROL,0 !use standard solver /PREP7 C*** Corrected for ANSYS 5.6 /TITLE,Model F using SOLID 45 with Plasticity C*** Linear material properties MP,EX,1,207E3 MP,NUXY,1,0.3 C*** Define non-linear properties TB,BKIN,1 ! Bilinear model syield=300 ! Yield stress pmod=100 !Plastic modulus TBDAT,1,syield,pmod ! Nonlinear table C*** Define parameters cyl_ir=32.5 cyl_or=47.5 sph_ir=95 sph_or=105 r_flange=60 t_flange=20 l_overal=200 i_press=2 !NOT USED NOW C*** Define keypoints K,1,sph_ir K,2,sph_or K,3,0,sph_ir K,4,0,sph_or K,100 K,5,cyl_ir K,6,cyl_or KGEN,2,5,6,1,,l_overal LARC,1,3,100,sph_ir LARC,2,4,100,sph_or L,5,7 L,6,8 C*** Perform Boolean Operation keeping lines BOPTN,KEEP,YES !Boolean operations keep original entities /PNUM,LINE,1 LCSL,1,3 !Classify (break lines 1 and 3 at intersection) LDEL,1,3,2 !Delete unwanted lines LDEL,6,7 LCSL,5,4 LDEL,1,7,6 LDEL,3,4 LCSL,2,6 LDEL,2,3 LDEL,6,7 C*** Form top Flange KGEN,2,8,8,1,(r_flange-cyl_or) KGEN,2,7,12,5,,-t_flange L,13,14 LCSL,2,4 LDEL,2,4 C*** Define AREAS A,1,2,11,9 A,9,11,15,13 A,13,15,8,7 A,15,14,12,8

C*** Make VOLUMES K,16,,,-sph_ir LARC,1,16,100,sph_ir VDRAG,1,2,3,4,,,15 C*** Select ELEM type and size ET,1,45 !Choose 1st element type as SOLID45 ESIZE,10 !Make default size 10 VMESH,ALL !Mesh all volumes WAVES !Optimise.... SAVE FINI /SOLUT ANTYPE,STAT C*** Find pressure to give 1st yield from before (36) OUTRES,ALL,ALL ! Give all results for all load steps TIME,36 KBC,1 !Step load change pressy=36 !Specify initial load (known) SFA,8,1,PRES,pressy SFA,12,1,PRES,pressy SFA,16,1,PRES,pressy SFTRAN C*** Apply symmetry conditions NSEL,R,LOC,X,0 DSYM,SYMM,X NALL NSEL,R,LOC,Y,0 DSYM,SYMM,Y NALL NSEL,R,LOC,Z,0 DSYM,SYMM,Z NALL SOLVE KBC,0 !ramp on additional increments of load above yield AUTOTS,ON !autotimestepping on PRED,ON !Predictor on TIME,100 !Go to a load of 100 max...or fail if before press1=100 C*** For info limit pressure is 57.8 SFA,8,1,PRES,press1 SFA,12,1,PRES,press1 SFA,16,1,PRES,press1 SFTRAN DELTIM,5,2,8 ! start,min,max SOLVE FINI /POST1 SET,LIST SET,1,1 PLNSOL,S,EQV SET,2,1 PLNSOL,S,EQV SET,2,2 PLNSOL,S,EQV SET,2,3 PLNSOL,S,EQV C*** and so on...