Hi,
I'm currently writing my msc on fatigue in mooring chains. As a part of the thesis, I'm required to run a FEA on a mooring chain over a geometry, to quantify a SCF for later calculations.
Solidworks became the software of choice as I had previous experience and a sales rep. in Norway said the analysis was doable. Scenario/geometry attached.
It has since been 3 months, and I have not been able to make it converge. The figure has a lot of contacts and no initial stiffness and chain links will move, which SolidWorks struggles with. The following conditions are currently added to the simulation:
- Singularity elimination factor = 0.1
- Large strain option
- Automatic Solver
- Initial step = 1e-5, max step = 0.01, minstep = 1e-8
- All no penetration contacts w/ surface to surface condition
- Fully fixed on top end link
- Allowed to move in force direction at lower link
- Fixtures on middle part all links are only active until time step 0.015 to create initial stiffness
- Small displacement of 0.001mm in force direction linear until time step 0.1 to help with stiffness
- At time 0.1, a force linearly increases to 60 kN until time 1
- Mesh is fine on all surfaces where contact and stress concentrations are expected
- The geometry that the chain is laid over could in reality be rigid, but this has currently not been added (have not found out how)
Pack and go link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rQmnYhnhmOHFUSqKoq6r00NpkDWRu1oD/view?usp=sharing
At this point I'm open to all suggestions on how to make this work in Solidworks, as I haven't gotten a reply from my Norwegian contact in a month.
Also, if anyone know if it is possible to import attached model in Abaqus and run the analysis there I would be forever grateful. I initially intended to use onhouse expertice at my school to run this analysis in Abaqus, but COVID-19 put a stop to that.
I currently have access to SolidWorks 2019 and Abaqus 2017. No previous experiences with Abaqus, but know the solver is much more suited for this kind of problem than Solidworks
