Nowadays FE-simulations for sheet metal forming process are used to reduce the tryout phase in automotive industries. But the complex forming simulation processes are very challenging. One of the challenges is to create an FE-model which can be used to analyze the effects of cushion motion on the forming process. This thesis is focused on creating an FE model for two dies single cushion sheet metal forming press which can be used to analyze the effects of cushion motion on the contact pressure between the stamping tools and blanks. Using LS-PrePost a model with rigid stamping tools and cushion was created where the two blanks were of different thicknesses. After the model creation LS-DYNA was used for the simulations. The results showed that the cushion is moving in all DOFs and due to this movements, uneven contact pressure distribution is seen on the blanks and stamping tools.

A numerical simulation is conducted using LS-DYNA to simulate hard projectile impact on a friction stir welded (FSW) plate. As the hard projectile has a wide range of velocity, mass and shape, when referring to AMC 25.963(e) of CS-25, ―Fuel Tank Access Cover‖, the hard projectile can be defined as 9.5 mm cubic-shaped steel engine debris with an initial impact velocity of 213.4 m/s (700 ft/s). This preliminary study was to evaluate whether the fuel tank adjacent skin panel joined by FSW would pass the regulation. First, the geometry and Johnson-Cook material model of the FSW joint were developed based on previous experimental research and validated by comparison with the tensile test on the FSW specimen. Then the impact on an Aluminium Alloy 2024 (AA 2024) plate without FSW was modelled. The minimum thickness of a homogeneous AA 2024 plate which could withstand the impact from engine debris is 3 mm. Finally the impact on 3 mm thick AA 2024 FSW plate was simulated. The welding induced residual stress was implemented in the plate model. The impact centre was changed from the nugget zone to the thermo-mechanically affected zone, heat-affected zone and base material zone of the FSW joint. Penetration only occurred in the model with impact centre on the nugget zone. Additional simulation indicated that increasing the thickness of the FSW plate to 3.6 mm could prevent the penetration.

The bump at the end of the railway bridge is a result of differential movement between the bridge deck and the approach embankment. The movement can have the form of a bump or a dip. Either defect in the track geometry can cause significant problems in track performance. The current state of practice was evaluated by conducting a literature review and an industry survey. According to the survey, approximately half of all railway bridges are affected by the bump/dip. The total annual cost for repairing these bridge transition problems is estimated at $26 million. This does not take into account the considerable cost resulting from speed reductions that railroads must place on trains at these locations. In addition to the increased maintenance costs, the bump/dip leads to higher impact loads, uncomfortable rides and possible safety hazards. The track response due to the bump at the end of the bridge was evaluated by creating a 4-D finite element model of the train, track structure and track substructure. The motion of the train model across a bridge/approach transition, with and without a bump/dip, was then simulated using LS-DYNA. It was found that a track modulus differential alone (no bump/dip) at a bridge/approach location leads to impact forces as well as increased ballast and subgrade pressures on the approach. This instigates the formation of a bump or dip in the track. The track response is increased when a bump/dip is present in the track profile. A parametric study looking at the influence of train direction, train speed, bump/dip size, approach embankment soil modulus, approach tie material, bridge tie material, bridge deck type, ballast thickness and approach tie length on the magnitude of impact forces, track deflection, ballast and subgrade pressures was also performed with the model. Finally, a design solution to minimize the bump at the end of the bridge is proposed. The solution involves installing varying length steel bars into a soft subgrade approach embankment. The solution addresses both the settlement and track modulus differential between the bridge and the embankment. A full-scale field test of this prototype solution is underway.

In this thesis large deformation behavior of shell structures under high intensity transient loading conditions is investigated by means of finite element method. For this purpose an explicit finite element program is developed with interactive user interface. The developed program deals with geometric and material nonlinearities which stem from large deformation elastic - plastic behavior. Results of the developed code are compared with the experimental data taken from the literature and simulation results of the commercial finite element program Ls-Dyna. Moreover, sensitivity study is carried out for mesh size, element type and material model parameters. After the comparison and verification of the obtained results, it is concluded that converged and reasonable results are achieved.

The demand for artificial heart valve replacements is increasing as a result of birth defects, ageing and disease. Collaboration between engineers, biologists and mathematicians is necessary to handle problems related to biocompatibility and fluid dynamics. As a result of the increased demand for artificial heart valves, many new designs have been developed recently. A method to test those designs is to use mathematical modeling. This method has a relatively low-cost and can be used as a preliminary tool before expensive prototypes are created. This research analyzes the use of the numerical modeling software LS-DYNA for large-displacement fluid-structure interaction. It is a preliminary study aimed at the analysis of heart valve dynamics. In particular, a channel with flap model is created in LS-DYNA. The model's physics, convergence and ability to handle large deformations is investigated.

A popular way to reduce weight in industrial products without compromising the strength or stiffness is to replace components made of metal by plastics that have been reinforced by glass fibers. When fibers are introduced in a plastic, the resulting composite usually becomes anisotropic, which makes it much more complex to work with in simulation software. This thesis looks at modeling of such a composite using the multi-scale material modeling tool Digimat. An injection molding simulation of a brush cutter casing made of a short fiber reinforced plastic has been performed in order to obtain information about the glass fiber orientations, and thus the anisotropy, in each material point. That information has then been transferred over from the injection mesh to the structural mesh via a mapping routine. An elasto-viscoplastic material model with failure has been employed and calibrated against experimental data to find the corresponding material parameters. Lastly, a finite element analysis simulating a drop test has been performed. The results from the analysis have been compared with a physical drop test in order to evaluate the accuracy of the methodology used. The outcome has been discussed, conclusions have been drawn and suggestions for further studies have been presented.

As part of the development process for new stamping dies, in the automotive sheet metal forming (SMF) industry, the majority of all forming operations are simulated with the Finite Element Method (FEM) before the dies are manufactured. Today, these simulations are conducted with rigid tools under the assumption that there are no tool deformations. However, research shows that tool deformations have an influence on the finished product. In real production these deformations are compensated by manual rework during the try-out. Additional reason for simulating with rigid dies is that there are non-existing simulation methods elaborated for elastic stamping dies. Also, simulation of elastic tools requires high computational power.     Since simulations today are performed with rigid stamping dies the purpose of this work is to investigate the conditions of how to conduct SMF-simulations with elastic stamping dies. The object that will be studied is a stamping die for a Volvo XC90 inner door used in a single-action press. This work is part of the development to minimize the manual rework, with the goal to compensate for tool deformations in a virtual environment.    Results for rigid stamping dies in LS-Dyna was compared to currently used AutoForm as a pre-study. A simple model was then created to find a suitable method while using elastic stamping dies. The developed method was used for an industrial size stamping die.     Since there are little amount of research performed on simulations using elastic stamping dies, elasticity and complexity were gradually introduced into the FE-model. As a first step, only the punch was included as an elastic solid. Secondly, the die was added. Finally, the entire die was simulated as elastic together with the hydraulic cushion of the press. When the FE-model worked as expected a suitable method for minimizing the simulation time with acceptable results was studied.     Comparisons of measured- and simulation results show a high correlation. To improve the results from the FE-model factors such as press deformations, advanced friction models, etc. should be included.    Conclusions from this work shows that it is possible to perform SMF-simulations with elastic stamping dies. As the computational time normally is high this work also presents a method first step to reduce the computational time with acceptable results. Comparisons between simulations with rigid and elastic stamping dies proves that there are significant differences in the outcome of the two methods. / Reduced Lead Time through Advanced Die Structure Analysis - Vinnova

When operating hydraulic mining excavators the loading equipment is exposed to harsh conditions which lead to extensive wear of the equipment, especially the bucket and bucket teeth. Simulations are used to better understand the wear development and to evaluate new methods to operate excavators more efficiently. At the Aitik mine, operated by the high-tech metal company Boliden Mines, hydraulic excavators are used when loading the mined ore. One of the hydraulic excavators used at Aitik is the Komatsu PC7000. In this master thesis, a simulation model for the hydraulic excavator Komatsu PC7000 was developed with the simulation software LS-DYNA. This model consists of multi rigid body dynamics to describe the motion of the excavator and a granular material model to describe the rocks loaded into the bucket of the excavator. Simulations with two different types of granular material models have been utilized to study the wear development of the bucket. One of the models (bonded DE model) uses bonded discrete elements to describe the large rocks and single discrete elements are used to describe smaller rocks. This model is compared to the current FE-DE model which is being used today at Boliden. This model uses finite elements (FE) to model the larger rocks and discrete element spheres (DES) for smaller rocks. By using the bonded DE method a 71\% reduction in simulation time could be achieved. This can be partly explained by the reduction of the number of elements included in the rock pile.  Archard's wear law was used to numerically describe the wear development of the bucket. When simulating the wear a total of 30 bucket fillings were performed with the excavator. This was done with both the bonded DE method and the FE-DE method. In this wear study, the inside of the bucket was of interest. The resulting simulated wear map was compared to experimental measurements from which the plate thickness of the bucket had been measured two times to obtain the wear depth of some points inside the bucket. The experimental measurements and two 3D scanned point clouds were used to determine the wear depth inside the bucket. Results from the simulation showed that the wear is concentrated to the center of the bucket while less wear is concentrated to the sides of the bucket. With the bonded DE method the wear appeared to be more evenly distributed inside the bucket while the wear from the FE-DE method appeared in spots inside the bucket. The experimental results also showed that the wear was more extensive in the center of the bucket and also in the back of the bucket. Both simulation methods also showed that the wear was concentrated to the back of the bucket. From the simulations, it was also seen that the behavior of the material flow differed between the two methods. In the bonded DE method the material flow had more sliding behavior while the material flow in the FE-DE method had more rolling behavior. This could also be the reason why the bonded DE method captures the wear more evenly. The rolling behavior seen in the FE-DE method leads to more impact wear which is not captured by Archard's wear law. Overall, the bonded DE method leads to a big reduction in simulation time which is favorable when it comes to simulation. The larger rocks will have simpler shapes without sharp corners. However, the method allows for a more complex shape than just an ordinary sphere which is the simplest and most common shape to describe granular material. The bonded DE method also allows for easier configuration of contact definition since fewer contact interfaces must be added to the model. Furthermore, the post-processing of wear in LS-DYNA was facilitated since the wear does not have to be divided into two wear collectors for FE elements and DE elements.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The design optimization of laminated composite structures is of relevance in automobile, naval, aerospace, construction and energy industry. While several optimization methods have been applied in the design of laminated composites, the majority of those methods are only applicable to linear or simplified nonlinear models that are unable to capture multi-body contact. Furthermore, approaches that consider composite failure still remain scarce. This work presents an optimization approach based on design and analysis of computer experiments (DACE) in which smart sampling and continuous metamodel enhancement drive the design process towards a global optimum. Kriging metamodel is used in the optimization algorithm. This metamodel enables the definition of an expected improvement function that is maximized at each iteration in order to locate new designs to update the metamodel and find optimal designs. This work uses explicit finite element analysis to study the crash behavior of composite parts that is available in the commercial code LS-DYNA. The optimization algorithm is implemented in MATLAB. Single and multi-objective optimization problems are solved in this work. The design variables considered in the optimization include the orientation of the plies as well as the size of zones that control the collapse of the composite parts. For the ease of manufacturing, the fiber orientation is defined as a discrete variable. Objective functions such as penetration, maximum displacement and maximum acceleration are defined in the optimization problems. Constraints are included in the optimization problem to guarantee the feasibility of the solutions provided by the optimization algorithm. The results of this study show that despite the brittle behavior of composite parts, they can be optimized to resist and absorb impact. In the case of single objective problems, the algorithm is able to find the global solution. When working with multi-objective problems, an enhanced Pareto is provided by the algorithm.

The idea to use finite element (FE) models to reconstruct accidents for humans is becoming more popular the last years. They represent the human body very accurately and indicate well changes in shape, size and biomechanical properties. FE models are useful when looking at complex factors in the human body in a more systematic way and when the approach is too complicated for conventional setups. Positioned child models from PIPER were used in the process and then rotated in LS-PrePost according to impact points and impact velocities from a given literature data where information from witnessed fall accidents of children was given. The simulations were finally run in LS-Dyna and the purpose was to investigate if the resulting brain injuries were similar to the real life data. From the literature, the falling distance from lowest point of the body to the ground, the age of the child, gender, type of ground and results from CT scans were all known. To compare the results to the literature data, section cuts of the brain were taken at four locations with different time steps. Biomechanical injury predictors such as brain strain, acceleration, rotational angular acceleration and rotational angular velocity were observed and helped with the comparison. In total, 12 cases were reconstructed which ended as 22 simulations. Due to uncertainty regarding the falling height when the children fell from a swing, each swing case had 3 scenarios. Overall the comparison of predicted injury locations from LS-Dyna to real injury locations from CT scans indicated that 7 out of 12 cases compared relatively well. The comparison of a 23-month-old girl to the same case reconsructed with CRABI-18 showed similar outcomes of the angular acceleration and the angular velocity. The linear acceleration and HIC were however much higher with LS-Dyna. Comparison between the swing cases of a 10-, 12- and 13-year-old resulted in similar results for the 12- and 13 year-old girls but the 10 year boy had lower values for all biomechanical parameters except the angular velocity which was a bit higher. With more detailed information about real accidents and precise scaling of PIPER child models, reconstruction with LS-Dyna could be useful in the future to design safer playgrounds for children and to obtain injury criterion for children after fall incidents. / Användande av finita element (FE) modeller för att rekonstruera olyckor har blivit allt populärare de senaste åren. De representerar människokroppen mycket noggrant och indikerar väl förändringari form, storlek och biomekaniska egenskaper. FE-modeller är användbara när man tittar på komplexa faktorer i människokroppen på ett mer systematiskt sätt och när tillvägagångssättet är för komplicerat för konventionella metoder. PIPER barnmodellerna positionerades i enlighet med islagpunkter och islaghastigheter från en given databas där informationen från vittnade fallolyckor av barn gavs. Simuleringarna kördes slutligen i LS-Dyna och syftet var att undersöka om predikteringarna liknade de resulterande hjärnskadorna. Från databasen var fallhöjd från kroppens lägsta punkt till marken, barnets ålder, kön, typ av mark och resultat från CT skanningar kända. För att jämföra resultaten med litteraturdata togs sektionsavsnitt av hjärnan på fyra platser med olika tidspunkter. Biomekaniska skadeprediktorer såsom hjärntöjning, acceleration, vinkelacceleration och vinkelhastighet extraherades och användes i jämförelsen. Totalt, rekonstruerades 12 fallolyckor med totalt 22 simuleringar. På grund av osäkerhet om fallhöjden när barnen föll från en gunga, hade varje fall från gunga 3 scenarier/fallhöjder var. Sammantaget indikerar jämförelsen av förväntade skadepredikteringar från LS-Dyna till observerade skador från CT-skanningar att 7 av 12 fall korrelerade relativt bra. Jämförelsen av en 23 månader gammal tjej i samma fall som tidigare också rekonstruerades med en CRABI-18 docka visade liknande resultat av vinkelaccelerationen och vinkelhastigheten. Linjär acceleration och HIC var emellertid mycket högre med LS-Dyna simuleringarna. Jämförelse mellan fallen från gunga hos en 10-, 12-och 13-åring resulterade i liknande resultat för 12- och 13-åriga flickor, medan 10-åringen hade lägre värden för alla biomekaniska parametrar utom den vinkelhastighet som var lite högre. Med mer detaljerad information om verkliga olyckor och exakt uppskalning av PIPER barnmodeller kan rekonstruktion med LS-Dyna vara användbar i framtiden för att utforma säkrare lekplatser för barn och för att få skadeskala för barn efter fallhändelser.