FEA of fluid-structural problems

[elastomer]

I would like to find a FEA package suitable for analysing quasi-static and dynamic fluid-structural problems of liquid-filled silicone elastomer sacs. I understand that potentially suitable packages include ABAQUS, MARC and ANSYS. I also have a particular interest in fatigue and lifetime prediction analyses. In this area I have recently become aware of a specialised package (FLEXPAC)from MERL which is bundled with ANSYS pre- and post-processing software. I am very interested to know if any users have experience with this software. Any comments or general advice would be very much appreciated. Many thanks!!

 

[brad]

I can't speak for the ANSYS add-on, as I am not familiar with it. You mentioned that ABAQUS and MARC are also capable of this analysis. I am in fact very familiar with ABAQUS's capabilities with regards to this very type of analysis. ABAQUS is definitely capable of that type of analysis, and they also have their own add-on product called ABAQUS/SAFE (it is an add-on developed by a British Company called Safe Technologies). This can do fatigue life predictions based on the ABAQUS results. I am presuming that this is the functionality that you are looking for. Note, however, that this (and virtually any) fatigue prediction software is generally not considered suitable for elastomeric life prediction, as the theories on which most fatigue is predicted are geared to metals.
Hope this helped.
Brad

 

[mtnengr]

There are several FEM programs from NISEE (UC Berkeley) written by Nash and his students. Also look at MSC NASTRAN. In the 1979 Smirt Conf., I presented a paper with MacNeal and Chirgan on FSI. Further in an ASME paper in ASME J Press Vessel Technology, Nov. 1980, I show how to include Fluid Mass matrices in a FEM program.

If you need additional help, just e-mail me.

R. L. Citerley: citerley@volcano.net

 

[randhawa]

I would say, you must use LSDYNA 960 for this analysis. LSDYNA is an dynamic explicit non-linear software and moreover the fluid structure interaction capabilities using ALE functionalities are wonderful.
I have done a helicopter water landing analysis recently.
email me : hsrandy@hotmail.com