Lecture 7

Body Interactions
16.0 Release

Introduction to ANSYS
Explicit STR
1 © 2015 ANSYS, Inc. April 15, 2015
 Body Interactions
The Body Interactions folder, under Connections, is used to define
global connection options for Explicit Dynamics
• Contact Detection
– Trajectory (default)
• Formulation
• Shell Thickness Factor
• Tolerance
– Proximity Based
• Pinball Factor
• Timestep Safety Factor
• Limiting Timestep Velocity
• Edge On Edge Contact
• Body Self Contact
• Element Self Contact
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 Trajectory Contact
Recommended option for impact and sliding contact between Solids,
Shells and Beams.
The trajectory of nodes and faces are tracked during the computation
cycle. If the trajectory of a node and a face intersects during the
cycle a contact event is detected (see figure).
Trajectory based contact does not constrain the time step
• Often provides the most efficient solution.
Nodes which penetrate into another element at the start of the
simulation will be ignored for contact and should be avoided.
• To generate duplicate conforming nodes across a contact interface
a) Group all Bodies into a single Part
b) Set the Shared Topology Method for the Part to “None”
c) In Meshing, insert Match Control objects scoped to the contact
surfaces (This step may not be necessary if a single global element
size is used)
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 Trajectory Contact
Shell Thickness Factor
• The Shell Thickness Factor (STF) defines the shell (surface body) thickness used for contact
– A factor of 1.0 takes the true physical shell thickness into account, which means that the contact surface
is positioned at half the true shell thickness on both sides of the shell mid plane.
– A factor of 0.0 means that the shell has no contact thickness and the contact surface is positioned at the
shell mid plane.
– Value must be between 0.0 and 1.0 (0.0 is recommended)
• For shell node on shell face impacts, the node is always located at the mid-surface of the shell.

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 Trajectory Contact
Formulations
• Penalty Formulation (default, recommended)
– A penalty force is calculated to push a penetrating node back to the face.
– Penalty forces are calculated to conserve linear and angular momentum.

where D is the depth of penetration

M is the effective mass of the node (N) and face (F)
Δt is the simulation time step
– Nodes will be pushed back towards the contact position, but it will usually take several cycles to satisfy the contact
condition.
• Decomposition Response
– All contacts that take place at the same point in time are first detected. The response of the system is then
calculated to conserve momentum and energy. During this process, forces are calculated to ensure that the
resulting position of nodes and faces does not result in further penetration at that time point
– The decomposition response algorithm is more impulsive (in a given cycle) than the penalty method. This can in
some situations give rise to large hourglass energies and energy errors.
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 Trajectory Contact – Nodal Shell Thickness (Beta)

Overlapped Shell Thickness in R15 Corrected Shell Thickness in R16

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 Proximity Based Contact
• Alternative option for impact and sliding contact between
Solids, Shells and Beams
– The external faces, edges and nodes of a mesh are encapsulated by a
contact detection zone. If a node enters this zone, it is repelled using a
penalty based force that conserves linear and angular momentum

– Pinball Factor defines the size of the contact detection zone (Gap).
– Smallest element size is multiplied by this factor to give the physical size
of the contact detection zone.
– Value must be between 0.1 to 0.5.
– The smaller the fraction the more accurate the solution.
– Initial geometry / mesh must be defined such that there is a physical gap /
separation of at least the contact detection zone size between interacting
nodes and faces in the model.
– Solver will give error messages if this criteria is not satisfied.
– May not be practical for very complex assemblies.

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 Proximity Based Contact
• Time step is constrained so that contact nodes can travel no more than
(contact detection zone size) x (Timestep Safety Factor) in one cycle.

– Default Timestep Safety Factor is 0.2 (strongly recommended)

• Increasing to 0.5 (maximum value) may increase time step and

reduce runtimes, but contacts may be missed.

– Time step is computed using the maximum velocity of all contact

nodes, but limited by the Limiting Timestep Velocity (default very
large).

• Use with care or contacts may be missed

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 Proximity Based Contact
Edge on Edge Contact
Edge on Edge contact can be used to extend contact detection to
include edge to edge contacts (standard detection is node to
face).
• All edges of Solid, Shell and Beam elements will be included in the
contact detection.
• This option is numerically intensive and can significantly increase
runtimes. No Edge on Edge contact
– Should not be needed if mesh is sufficiently fine
– Compare results with and without edge contact to make sure this option is
required.

With Edge on Edge contact

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 Trajectory and Proximity Based Contact
Body Self Contact
• By default, the contact detection algorithm will check for
external nodes of a body contacting with faces of the same body
in addition to other bodies.
– Most robust option since all possible external contacts should
be detected.
• If self impact of a body is unlikely, set Body Self Contact = No
– Reduces the number of possible contact events
– Improve efficiency of the simulation.
– Do not use if a body is likely to fold onto itself during the simulation e.g. during plastic
buckling.

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 Trajectory and Proximity Based Contact
Element Self Contact
This option automatically removes (erodes) an element if it
deforms such that one of its nodes comes within a tolerance
of one of its faces, i.e. before it becomes degenerate or
inverted.
• For Trajectory Contact a Tolerance factor is specified
– Smallest element size is multiplied by this factor to give the physical tolerance.
– Value must be between 0.1 to 0.5.
• For Proximity Based Contact, the Pinball Factor is
used for the tolerance factor

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 Body Interaction Objects
Each Body Interaction object activates a body interaction for the bodies
scoped in the object
• Four Types of Body Interaction
– Bonded
– Frictionless (contact)
– Frictional (contact)
– Reinforcement
• Contact detection is completely automated.
– Every node of the scoped bodies interacts with every face of the scoped bodies.
– A default Frictionless interaction is scoped to all bodies
To improve the efficiency of simulations involving large number of
bodies:
• Suppress the default Frictionless interaction
• Insert new Body Interaction objects which limit interactions to specific
bodies.
– The union of all Frictional / Frictionless body interactions defines the matrix of possible body interactions
during the simulation.
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 Body Interaction Objects
• Example
– Body A is travelling towards body B and we require
Frictional contact to take place. A body Interaction of
type frictional scoped only to Bodies A and B will
achieve this.
– Body A will not come close to body C during the
simulation so does not need to be included in the
interaction. A bonded body interaction of can
– Body B is bonded to Body C. A body Interaction of be applied in addition to a frictional
type bonded, scoped to Bodies B and C will achieve / frictionless body interaction
this
– If the bond between bodies B and C breaks during the simulation. We want frictional
contact to take place between bodies B and C. A body interaction of type frictional
scoped to bodies B and C will achieve this
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 Body Interaction Objects
Types of Body Interactions
• Frictionless (default)
– Sliding contact is frictionless.
• Frictional
– Friction Coefficient
• A non-zero value will activate Coulomb type friction between bodies:
F = μ sR
– Dynamic Coefficient, Decay Constant
• Non-zero values will activate dynamic friction where the relative velocity (v) of sliding
interfaces can influence frictional forces:
μs = Friction Coefficient
μd = Dynamic coefficient
β = Decay Constant
ν = relative sliding velocity
at point of contact
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 Body Interaction Objects
Examples – Frictional / Frictionless

Baseball Hit Metal Forming

Impact of Multi-layered Target Tube Crush

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 Body Interaction Objects
Examples – Frictional / Frictionless

Self-piercing Rivet

Aircraft Impact

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 Body Interaction Objects
Types of Body Interactions
• Bonded
– External nodes of bodies included in Bonded interactions are tied to
faces of bodies included in the interaction if the nodes are within the
defined Maximum Offset distance of a face
• Solver automatically detects bonded nodes / faces during
initialization.
– Bonds can break during a simulation based on a specified Stress
Criteria.
• Effective normal and shear stresses are calculated at each node
involved in a bonded connection.
• If the following criteria is exceeded, the node will be released from
bonded contact.

All released nodes will subsequently be added to the sliding contact

detection algorithm.
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 Body Interaction Objects
Types of Body Interactions
• Bonded (continued)
– It is important to select an appropriate value for the Maximum
Offset. The automatic search will bond a node which is to be tied to
a face within the offset distance, the selected face will be the
closest one which is most parallel to a face to which the tied node
belongs.
– The breakable bond criteria works best when equivalent, or similar,
meshes are used on the faces at either side of the bond.
– Bonded connections must be used with Trajectory Contact
– Flexible to Rigid body bonded connections can only be made using
Body Interaction objects

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 Body Interaction Objects
Examples – Bonded / Breakable

Electronics Drop Test

Pull-Test

Cell Phone Drop Test

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 Body Interaction Objects
Types of Body Interactions
• Reinforcement
– Used to apply discrete reinforcement to solid bodies
• Line body elements scoped to the object, contained within any solid body in the
model, are converted to discrete reinforcement elements / nodes
• Elements which lie outside solid bodies remain standard beam elements
• Reinforcing beam nodes are constrained to stay at the same parametric location
within the solid element they reside during element deformation
– For good modeling, the size of the beam elements should be similar or
less than that of the volume elements
• If volume elements erode, reinforcing nodes tied to them become free beam
nodes
• If reinforcing beam elements erode, and inertia is retained, the eroded nodes
will remain tied to the parametric location of their solid elements
– Typical applications involve reinforced concrete or reinforced rubber
structures likes tires and hoses
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 Body Interaction Objects
Drop Test of Waste Container
Examples - Reinforcement

Impact on Reinforced Concrete

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 Contact Regions
Used to define specific face to face contact interactions
Contact and target faces are scoped to each manual contact
region
• For shell bodies, target shell face option is not respected for
Explicit Dynamics. The nearest shell face is always selected
Types
• Bonded: Bonds can be breakable
• No Separation: not supported for Explicit Dynamics
• Frictionless
• Rough: not supported for Explicit Dynamics
• Frictional
– Static and dynamic friction options
Settings defined under Body Interactions are used for Body
Interaction Object and Contact Region Object
May reduce Solve times
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 Spot Welds
Rigidly connect two discrete points to model welds, rivets, bolts e.t.c.
• Points usually belong to two different surfaces
• Defined on the geometry (DesignModeler)
• Respected by Meshing
• Points are automatically connected by a rigid beam element
Can fail (break) using Breakable Stress Criteria or Force Criteria.

Where fn and fs are normal and shear interface forces (normal force is only non-zero
for tension), Sn and Ss are the Normal and Shear Force Limit, and n and s are the
Normal and Shear Stress Exponent (For stress criteria an Effective Diameter is used
to convert the stress limits to equivalent force limits)
Spot welds of zero length are permitted
• Failure criteria is modified since local normal and shear directions cannot
be defined
• Δf are component force differences across the spot weld

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 Spot welds
Connecting shell points have both translational and rotational degrees of freedom
linked
Points on solid bodies, have additional rigid beam elements automatically generated
to enable transfer of rotations at the spot weld location
Beam elements are automatically deleted if weld fails

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 Body Interaction Objects
Examples – Spot Welds
Impact Barrier Test
Breakable
Unbreakable

Tube Break

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 Spring and Damper Connections
• Available under Connections
• Both Longitudinal Stiffness and Damping are supported
– Example shows displacement of undamped (top) and damped
(bottom) springs
• Linear and Nonlinear behaviour
– Nonlinear spring definition via Tabular Input (unlimited data
points)
• Not limited to vertexes. Can be defined on edges or
surfaces via Remote Attachment
• Limitations
– Torsional springs not supported
– Preloads not supported

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 Spring/Damper Results Trackers
You can use a spring tracker to display the following longitudinal result items from a
spring in an Explicit Dynamics analysis
– Elongation – Elongation is the relative displacement between the two ends of the springs.
The elongation could be positive (stretching the spring) or negative (compressing the
spring).
– Velocity – Velocity is the rate of stretch (or compression) of the spring.
– Elastic Force – Elastic force is calculated as (Spring Stiffness * Elongation). The force acts
along the length of the spring (see example graph below)
– Damping Force – Damping force is calculated as (Damping Factor * velocity) and acts to
resist motion.

Spring Elastic Force

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 Body-Ground Springs

• Allows for easy definition of a longitudinal ground

spring attached to a body
– Can be transferred to Autodyn if necessary
• All options similar to a regular spring, except that
the ground side is automatic
– Ground is specified through global or local coordinate
system
– Velocity controlled damper option
– Scoping options
– Pinball region

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 Workshop 11 – Drop Test on Reinforced
Concrete
Goal:
Model the drop test response of a reinforced concrete beam
Procedure:
Create an Explicit Dynamics (ANSYS) Analysis System Project
Select the units system and define the material properties
Import the geometry and mesh the reinforced concrete beam
and steel parts
Define analysis settings, initial conditions, boundary conditions
and body interactions, including reinforcement for the beam
Initiate the solution and review the results

Walkthrough
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 Workshop 12 – KEP Impact on RC

Goal
• Simulate a KEP (Kinetic Energy Penetrator)
impact on a reinforced concrete target

Procedure
• Retrieve materials from Engineering Data
• Load the geometry
• Set-up reinforcement contact
• Mesh within explicit dynamics
• Run the simulation
Walkthrough
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 Workshop 13 – Circuit Board Drop Test
Goal:
Simulate the bonded/breakable contacts in the drop test simulation of a
circuit board
Procedure:
• Create an Explicit Dynamics (ANSYS) Analysis System Project
• Select the units system and define the material properties
• Import, view, and mesh the circuit board geometry
• Define analysis settings, boundary condition, and initial
condition
• Solve and review the results

Walkthrough
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