Customer Training Material

Workshop 2B

Performing a Restart

ANSYS Mechanical
Structural Nonlinearities

ANSYS, Inc. Proprietary Release 13.0

2011 ANSYS, Inc. All rights reserved. WS2B-1 April 2011
ANSYS Mechanical Structural Nonlinearities

Workshop 2B: Performing a Restart Customer Training Material

Goal
Use Restart Control technology to resume an unconverged solution
after making necessary adjustments to remedy the nonconvergence

Model Description
Same as Workshop 2A

ANSYS, Inc. Proprietary Release 13.0

2011 ANSYS, Inc. All rights reserved. WS2B-2 April 2011
ANSYS Mechanical Structural Nonlinearities

Workshop 2B: Performing a Restart Customer Training Material

Continuing with same model from

Workshop 2A, highlight the Force
load and increase the magnitude to
350N.

From Analysis Settings, open Restart

Controls and request all substeps be saved
as restart points.

Execute a new Solve

ANSYS, Inc. Proprietary Release 13.0

2011 ANSYS, Inc. All rights reserved. WS2B-3 April 2011
ANSYS Mechanical Structural Nonlinearities

Workshop 2B: Performing a Restart Customer Training Material

After a few warnings, errors and bisections, the run fails to converge.
Review the Solution Information Solver Output and Force Convergence plot

ANSYS, Inc. Proprietary Release 13.0

2011 ANSYS, Inc. All rights reserved. WS2B-4 April 2011
ANSYS Mechanical Structural Nonlinearities

Workshop 2B: Performing a Restart Customer Training Material

Examine the Solver Output text

Note the warnings and errors recorded early in the run that indicate excessive
element distortion and recommend more substeps as one possible remedy.

ANSYS, Inc. Proprietary Release 13.0

2011 ANSYS, Inc. All rights reserved. WS2B-5 April 2011
ANSYS Mechanical Structural Nonlinearities

Workshop 2B: Performing a Restart Customer Training Material

Recall that the default for Step Control was

used
For this application, with large deflection
turned ON, this resulted in the solver
automatically trying to solve this problem with
one substep initially, allowing up to 10
(maximum) if necessary.

Towards the end of the run, the Automatic

Time Stepping program had reduced the
timestep size down to the minimum value
(0.10). Therefore, no further adjustment
downward is available.

ANSYS, Inc. Proprietary Release 13.0

2011 ANSYS, Inc. All rights reserved. WS2B-6 April 2011
ANSYS Mechanical Structural Nonlinearities

Workshop 2B: Performing a Restart Customer Training Material

Return to Analysis Settings

set Restart Type to Manual
set Current Restart Point to the last successfully
converged subset (Loadstep 1, Substep 5)

A logical first attempt to remedy this

nonconvergence would be to simply enlarge the
time step range from the default values.
Turn Auto Time Stepping ON and adjust the range as
shown
10 is a reasonable value to restart initially
100 is just a guess based on experience.
The range is highly problem dependent. Other
models might require many more substeps.

ANSYS, Inc. Proprietary Release 13.0

2011 ANSYS, Inc. All rights reserved. WS2B-7 April 2011
ANSYS Mechanical Structural Nonlinearities

Workshop 2B: Performing a Restart Customer Training Material

After making these changes, execute the restart.

Highlight the Solution information Branch and

monitor the Force Convergence
Notice the additional bisections that lead to a
different convergence pattern and ultimately a
successfully completed run

ANSYS, Inc. Proprietary Release 13.0

2011 ANSYS, Inc. All rights reserved. WS2B-8 April 2011
ANSYS Mechanical Structural Nonlinearities

Workshop 2A: Large Deflection Customer Training Material

Review the stress and displacement

results as before.

Also confirm that the full load is

reacted out at the fixed support

ANSYS, Inc. Proprietary Release 13.0

2011 ANSYS, Inc. All rights reserved. WS2B-9 April 2011
ANSYS Mechanical Structural Nonlinearities

Workshop 2B: Performing a Restart Customer Training Material

For comparison, clear the generated data and re-

solve the model from the beginning.
Notice the model now solves with only one bisection
and in only 41 iterations, cutting the run time (by
more then 50%!) underscoring the importance of
taking advantage of auto time stepping technology
with a sufficient range in nonlinear problems.

ANSYS, Inc. Proprietary Release 13.0

2011 ANSYS, Inc. All rights reserved. WS2B-10 April 2011