Tutorial 9 (advanced):

Ball to Plate Impact with Element

Deletion

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Learning Objective
• Define a ductile damage evolution to allow for element deletion
• Increase the frequency at which the results are written to the *.odb
• Investigate how the mesh density affects the crack propagations

Learning Note: This tutorial covers a basic example of a ball being fired at an
aluminium plate. An element deletion criterion is defined and therefore the
plate ruptures and allows the ball to pass through.

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 Pre-Processing
• Import the part geometry – Tutorial 9.sat

• Define the material properties;

o Ball
Modulus: 210,000 MPa
Poisson’s: 0.3
Density: 7.8e-9 Tonnes/mm3
o Plate
Modulus: 70,000 MPa
Poisson’s: 0.3
Density: 2.5e-9 Tonne/mm3
Plastic Properties:

Yield Stress Plastic Strain

100 0
110 0.05

In addition to the elastic and plastic properties for the plate, we need to define the
element deletion criteria. We will use a ductile damage evolution with
displacement failure criteria. The values are arbitrary and for the purpose of the
demonstration only.

• In the ‘Edit Material’ dialogue box, go to Mechanical > Damage for Ductile
Metals > Ductile Damage and input the following;
o Fracture Strain: 0.001
o Stress Triaxiality: 0
o Strain Rate: 0

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 • In the Ductile Damage suboptions specify a damage evolution with a
failure displacement of 0.2

The damage evolution states that once the elements reach the failure criteria, i.e.
a displacement of 0.2, then the element is deleted.

• Create a section for each material and apply them to the geometry
o Ball
Solid, homogenous
Ball component
o Plate
Shell, homogenous
Shell thickness: 1
Plate component

• Instance the Assembly

• Create a Step
o Dynamic, Explicit
o Total time: 0.001
o Nlgeom: On

• Create an interaction
o General Contact
o All with self
o Friction Coeff: 0.1

• Fix the outside edge of the plate in all degrees of freedom

Ensure the boundary condition is only applied to the outside edges of the plate
otherwise there will be no deflection and therefore no element deletion.

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 • Apply an initial velocity of 40,000 mm/s to the ball in the Z-Direction

Ensure the velocity is applied the the whole volume and not just the surface.

Post-processing plots for element deletion aren’t included by default so they need
to be requested. We can also increase the output frequency at the same time.

• In the step module open the ‘Field Output Manager’

• Under the ‘State/Field/User/Time’ option select the ‘STATUS’ variable

• Modify the number of evenly spaced intervals to 50

• Apply an appropriate mesh

• Create and submit the job using additional processors if available

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 Post Processing
By default the viewer omits the deleted elements once they reach the failure
criteria. Try stepping through the solution using the step/frame selector tools
to view when the elements are deleted.

You can investigate the aspects of the model to determine what affect they have
on the results;

• Try releasing the plate boundary condition as if it was a disc for clay-
pigeon shooting

• Try reducing the velocity of the ball to see if it still penetrates the plate

• Reduce/Increase the mesh size of the plate to see if the crack alters

• Increase the thickness of the plate to see if the ball still penetrates

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