Software Issue or Bad Model?

[FreeD]

I have a fairly complex caesar II model which has been buried using the underground pipe modeller. I am carrying out analysis of the model under various temperature and pressure load conditions.
During the analysis under some loads the program goes into an iteration loop which doesn't appear to have a solution (I left it running for half an hour once to make sure). When this happen the only thing to do seems to be to cancel the analysis, get rid of the problematic load case and rerun the analysis, which is obviously far from ideal.
I found that changing some of the settings such as friction coefficients on some of the restraints and improving the mesh in the underground pipe modeller does affect/improve it, but the problem still occurs with some conditions (expecially now I have added displacements to the model).
Does anybody know if this is a software issue or if there may be an obvious problem with my model?

 

[richay]

CAESAR II does not have an iteration limit. When you attempt to solve a system with non-linear boundary conditions, the program must iterate, for each load case, until two consequative displacement solutions are within the convergence tolerances. If this never happens, you don't get a solution.

E-mail Technical Support at COADE about this issue. There are some tips and suggestions they can provide.

Richard Ay
COADE, Inc.