Hello David,

On 01/10/2014 10:51 AM, David N. Mashburn wrote:

Hello again Robert,

I'm finally coming back around to this project.

I see that using a time stepper with gradual load increase is the way to go for
a very large deformation solution; is there a recommended way to go about this
in sfepy? Is there a way to implement an increasing variable into the built-in
time solver, or is it better to run the simulation in a python loop and modify
the inputs manually?

Have a look at the perfusion example [1] - there is a pressure traction term with pressure depending on time (function get_traction()). Ignore the variables and terms you do not need - the traction is applied using dw_tl_surface_traction term. Let me know if this helps.

I am also not clear on whether the original mesh is suitable for every time
step or if it will need to be updated.

The total Lagrangian formulation integrates over the undeformed domain, and it should work up to a pretty large deformation. Be sure the mesh is fine enough, and that the load increments are such that the nonlinear solver in each time step converges. When you have your problem description written down, send me the complete example in case of convergence problems.

Cheers,
r.

[1] http://sfepy.org/doc-devel/examples/large_deformation/perfusion_tl.html

On 02/23/2013 06:13 AM, Robert Cimrman wrote:

Hi David,

On 02/22/2013 06:40 PM, David Mashburn wrote:

Thanks Robert, that already helps a lot. Glad to know it is a non-trivial
question.

We are actually trying to cross-check some analytical solutions, so I would
like to get this to work at least to some degree of confidence.

Do you think that those would be a good tests to add to sfepy test suite?

Certainly.

I've tried swapping out a simple neohookean system with bulk penalty and all
that like in the example. A warp violation seems to be causing an exception
after one iteration with a nominal amount of stress.

I've been digging through the nonlinear solver's parameters and can't find a
way to shrink the initial step size. The other work-around I can think of is
to use a time stepper to gradually increase the stress. Is there
another/easier way to do this?

Yes, this is the way to do it - use time stepping to increase the load
gradually. I am not aware of other ways. In nonlinear analysis with the
Newton solver, a good initial guess is required.

Ok, that makes sense now.

Also, is it normal for a system with a fairly large deformation to throw a
warp violation and then still recover afterwards (if so, then maybe this
exception is a bug?)

How does it recover? I assume it just throws off the warped solution and the
nonlinear iteration does not converge, right?

Right.

r.