Hello all,

I am performing analyses of cracking under impact with a VUMAT, making use of the element deletion functionality.

However, an element is deleted (no longer considered in the analysis) when ALL its material points have failed. In general, that does make sense. But with solid shell SC8R elements, an element can collapse when some of its material/section points have failed and others are still in the process. This causes excessive distortion instability and aborts the simulation.

My question is: can I make sure the entire element (the whole 'block' of material points) gets deleted as soon as one of its material points reaches the fail criterion? The state var associated with deletion should then be set from one to zero for all material points in the element, rather than for one.

I am aware that this can affect other aspects of the simulation, but a workable solution could still be found in this way.

Best regards.