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Interfacing ANSYS and LS-DYNA

Sample Problem #1: Cylindrical Bar Impacting a Rigid Wall

Pre-Processing

Open ANSYS
• ANSYS Interface has pull-down menu on the top. These menus cover functions such as plotting,
display, and selection of entities. Help menu is also at this location.
• ASNSY has also menus on the left side of the screen. These menus cover pre-processing,
processing, and post-processing.
• ANSYS needs to know that you are planning to create LS-DYNA model. That is why you need to
select LS-DYNA Explicit Explicit in the Preferences

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Define element type

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Define material type.

Material model used is inelastic, plastic kinematic with the following characteristics:
Density (g/cm3) = 8.93
Elastic Modulus (g/μsec2 cm) = 1.17
Tangent Modulus (g/μsec2 cm) = 1.0x10-3
Yield Strength (g/μsec2 cm) = 4.0x10-3
Poisson’s Ratio = 0.33
Hardening Parameter = 1.0

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Import a Parasolid file (Note: You can create the quarter cylinder volume in ANSYS using Modeling
menu)
File
Import
Para…

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Mesh Volume
Note: Once the volume becomes more complicated, hex elements will not work and tetrahedral
elements become the only

choice

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Add Boundary Conditions

These are the boundary conditions:
1. The surface at the origin cannot move in the z-direction
2. The two surface of symmetry cannot move in the normal direction

PlotCtrls
Pan Zoom Rotate
Front

Select nodes on the vertical edge

Restrict these nodes in UX, AY, and AZ

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Select nodes on the horizontal edge

Restrict these nodes in UY, AX, and AZ

PlotCtrls
Pan Zoom Rotate
Left

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Select nodes on the left edge

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Restrict them in UZ

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Set Time Controls

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Set Output Controls

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Specify the Output

(You can specify the output to either ANSYS, LS-DYNA, or both)

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Save File (It is very important to save in ANSYS format (*.db) since it cannot read DYNA format (*.k))
File
Save As
Sample1hx.db

Note: You will get warning that there is no explicit load defined. Ignore it since we will add the load
outside ANSYS.

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Initial Velocity:
Initial velocity and contact can be input in ANSYS by creating component and assigning the initial
velocity or contact specification to this component. It is much easier to create boxes that enclose the
nodes within specific segments of your model. You can do this by adding the following to your *.k
program. In this section two boxes are created:
• Box #1 encloses the surface at the origin
• Box #2 encloses all other nodes
Place the text near the end of the *.k file.

*DATABASE_EXTENT_BINARY
0 0 3 1 0 0 0 0
0 0 4 0 0 0
*DEFINE_BOX
$ i f f f f f f
$ boxid xmm xmx ymn ymx zmn zmx
1 -1.e6 1.e6 -1.e6 1.e6 -1.e6 0.50e-02
*DEFINE_BOX
$ i f f f f f f
$ boxid xmm xmx ymn ymx zmn zmx
2 -1.e6 1.e6 -1.e6 1.e6 0.50e-02 1.e6
*INITIAL_VELOCITY
$ i i i
$ nsid nsidex boxid
0 0 1
$ f f f f f f
$ vx vy vz
0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
*INITIAL_VELOCITY
$ i i i
$ nsid nsidex boxid
0 0 2
$ f f f f f f
$ vx vy vz vxe vye vze
0.0 0.0 -0.0227 0.0 0.0 0.0

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