The analysis type Static allows the static and hence time-invariant calculation of the displacements as well as the stresses and strains in one or multiple solid bodies caused by the applied constraints and loads, e.g. bearings, gravity, forces, etc.
The results enable you to evaluate whether your component is deformed in an undesired manner or if a critical stress state occurs at some specific detail of your geometry. The other way round, you can modify your design based on the simulation results to meet given requirements and test your new construction again. You find an overview of example fields of application on the bottom of this page.
In the following the different simulation settings you have to define are described in detail as well as the various options you can add.
In order to perform an analysis a given geometrical domain you have to discretize your model by creating a mesh out of it. Details of CAD handling and Meshing are described in the Pre-processing section.
After you assigned a mesh to the simulation you can add some optional domain-related settings and have a look on the mesh details. Please note that if you have an assembly of multiple bodies that are not fused together, you have to add Contacts if you want to build connections between those independent parts.
In the model section everything that defines the physics of the simulation is specified e.g. material properties, boundary conditions etc. On the top level you can adapt some generic settings. For this analysis type you can add a gravitational load for the whole domain and define if you want to run a geometrically linear or nonlinear analysis.
In order to define the material properties of the whole domain, you have to assign exactly one material to every part. You can choose the material behavior describing the constitutive law that is used for the stress-strain relation and the density of the material. Please note that the density is used for volumetric loads e.g. gravitation. Inertia effects are only considered in dynamic simulations (Dynamic). Please see the Materials section for more details.
In a Static analysis you can define Constraints (Displacement boundary conditions) Loads (Force boundary conditions). Most of the time it is reasonable to establish at least one displacement constraint in every coordinate direction in order to determine the position or movement of the structure. Exceptions are load based Physical Contact simulations, where one part might be expected to move freely due to a given load pattern.
In case of missing force boundary conditions (including gravitation), the geometry becomes load-free and apart from the prescribed displacement boundary conditions (constraints) no deformation will evolve. However, this might be intended to determine the strain distribution e.g. in pre-clamped structural components.
Constraint types (Displacement boundary conditions)
Load types (Force boundary conditions)
In the Physical Contacts section you can define contact pairs of surfaces. For those faces the distance between each other is tested during a nonlinear calculation and if they get in touch the interaction forces that prevent those faces from interpenetrating are taken into account. The solution method used to resolve the contact interaction is the penalty contact method.
Under numerics you can set the equation solver of your simulation. The choice highly influences the computational time and the required memory size of the simulation.
The Simulation Control settings define the overall process of the calculation as for example the timestepping interval and the maximum time you want your simulation to run before it is automatically cancelled.
The description of the analysis type Static refers to the use of the standard static analysis type via the physics perspective or via the solver perspective choosing the Code_Aster solver. You may as well choose the Static analysis of the finite element package CalCuliX (CCX), which is only available via the solver perspective (Static analysis CCX). See our Third-party software section for further information.
