SolidWorks Simulation, Tech Tips / Simulation Tech Tip: Shakers and Movers
You have created a Simulation study of a fairly large assembly.
It has a mixed mesh – Solid elements, also Shell elements, maybe also
some Beams. You are relying on the GLOBAL CONTACT – BONDED to tie
together all the mesh bodies of similar type. You spent maybe 40
minutes, at least, creating the BONDED contact conditions to tie the
dissimilar mesh elements together.
And now when you try to run the study, you get the failure message, “Zero or indefinite stiffness matrix”.
Ugh. That means that at least one component is not correctly
bonding to a neighbor, and so is free-floating. But which one? Since
the study won’t run, you can’t display the displacement plot, and see
which part(s) are flying off the screen. How to diagnose this – without
wasting the entire morning? There are two ways I approach solving the
problem, and they both use the study Property option, “Use Soft Springs
to Stabilize the Model”.
1: Moving
Sometimes you can simply turn ‘soft springs’ on, and run the study
again. About half the time, I find that the study will now run, (and
produce a warning message, that very large displacements were
detected). Tell it to continue running the study anyway, as-is, without
turning on the large-displacement flag. Then, when you plot the
Displacement results, you might very well be looking at an empty screen,
or you might see that one (or more) parts seem to be missing from the
plot. They are not missing – they simply went flying off the screen.
Set your Displacement scale factor to be wicked small, (think many
leading zeros), and then animate the displacement plot – and you’ll see
at the start of the animation, which parts are un-tethered, and in which
directions they are free to wander.
A cool and easy trick. Except that, I did say above, I use this
trick “about half the time”. Because the other half of the time, the
applied loads might act directly on the under-restrained parts, in the
same direction that they are free to move, and then the “Soft Springs”
do not supply enough stabilization. What to do then?
2: Shaking
The second approach is to Shake the assembly, instead of moving it.
Create a new Modal Study, (this will require the Simulation license to
be Simulation Professional or higher). Set the Modal Study Properties
to only ask for the lowest 2 mode-shapes, or maybe 3, but no more.
(this is a diagnosis, not a true study, so you want it to run fast).
Then you copy all your Restraints and Bonded conditions into the new
study.
Wait – I did NOT say to re-create all your Restraints and Bonded
contacts. I said “COPY” them. This is a “tip within the tip”. A lot
of people I encounter still don’t know you can do this. If you activate
your first, “real” study, you can then select the folder for your
Restraints, and DRAG that folder down to the row of tabs at the bottom
of your screen, and DROP it into your new Modal study. Done. So
creating this Modal study to diagnose your problem should take, like, 30
seconds tops. You do NOT have to copy over your system of loads –
just the restraints and bonding, because we are not going to ‘push’ your
assembly in any particular direction, we are instead going to vibrate
it in-place.
But, you DO still have to turn on the “Soft Springs” option to stabilize the model.
Ok, now you RUN the Modal study. Because the underlying equations
of the Modal study are being solved differently than a Static study, the
problem will generally solve O.K. even with under-supported parts.
And, when you activate the plot for the lowest 2 or 3 mode-shapes, each
one should show you some rigid-body motion, (and remember, it could also
be a rotation!), of the part or parts that are un-tethered. Animate
the model-shape plot, and it will be patently obvious which parts are
walking away, and in which directions.
Important caveat: The Modal Analysis method of diagnosing your
problem, will NOT allow you to create sliding or intermittent Contact
via the “No Penetration” gap elements. If your problem also has that
kind of Contact in it, you need to either ignore that contact for the
purpose of diagnosis, (which will too sloppy, and you’ll have to ask for
more Mode Shapes – ignore the responses you know are not ‘real’);
Or, you could replace the Bonded contact, with either an Elastic
Support, or a Spring Connector. With either of these, make the Normal
spring stiffness pretty high, but the tangential spring stiffness very
low – and you WILL have over-supported the selected faces a little bit.
But again, you’re just looking for which parts want to walk away, not
running the ‘real’ study yet, so we can throw a few darts. And if the
problem produces NO rigid-body modes when you’ve replaced the Gap
elements with springs, then you know for sure that the Contact
conditions are the real problem.
One of these two methods should solve the “Zero or Indefinite Matrix” problem for you, just about all the time.
Tags: SolidWorks Simulation Tutorials
Share your views...
0 Respones to "SolidWorks Simulation, Tech Tips / Simulation Tech Tip: Shakers and Movers "
Post a Comment