Computational Structural Mechanics
LS-DYNA®
Overview
The U.S. Department of Transportation´s (USDOT´s) current and near-future need for computational structural mechanics led the Transportation Research and Analysis Computing Center (TRACC) researchers to select the commercial LS-DYNA® software, developed by Livermore Software Technology Corporation, as TRACC´s primary structural analysis tool. It will be used for modeling and simulating bridge and cable dynamics, and crash events (vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-barrier). USDOT´s bridge analysis and crash communities currently use LS-DYNA®, and will not require any additional training to use the software at TRACC. LS-DYNA®, which is continuously being upgraded, contains many features that can handle the complexities embedded in USDOT's structural and media-structure interaction problems. The solvers include both explicit- and implicit-time integration schemes and a robust Eigen problem solver. The software also uses both finite-element methodology and the newer mesh-free methodology, an important factor in the choice of the software. It also employs the traditional Lagrangian, Eulerian and Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian formulations for solving continua problems. LS-DYNA® has been tested extensively on many parallel computing architectures and operating systems, and it has been used widely by industry, including the automotive, aircraft, metal forming, manufacturing, defense, and biomedical industries. TRACC has a 288 CPU (core) license with Livermore Software and Technology Corporation for use of the LS-DYNA® suite of codes, which includes LS-DYNA®, LS-PrePost®, and LS-OPT®.
Current TRACC Applications
As part of the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) Steel Bridge Test program, researchers at the FHWA Nondestructive Evaluation Center located at the Turner Fairbank Highway Research Center are performing structural integrity assessments of steel bridges, which represent 34 percent of the nearly 600,000 US highway bridges. Researchers at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (FHWA) are studying the biomechanics of traumatic brain injury resulting from crashes. A team of numerical analysts at the Texas Transportation Institute are analyzing and designing roadside safety hardware.
Using LS-DYNA@TRACC
- Instructions for using LS-DYNA® can be found HERE
- LS-DYNA® Training and Reference
- TRACC researchers are in the process of developing training courses.