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J04 - User Solver Variables

Overview

Flexcom now provides advanced user subroutines, denoted as User Solver Variables to distinguish from legacy features, which provide much greater flexibility and control. The user is empowered by the ability to access a host of solution variables including nodal kinematic variables (displacements, velocities, accelerations) and elemental restoring forces (effective tension, bending moment, curvature, torque etc.). Equipped with this information it is then possible to directly augment the global force vector to simulate an arbitrary time-varying load. It is even possible to directly modify the constitutive finite element matrices (i.e. stiffness and mass) should you have very specialised modelling requirements. Naturally this requires some programming expertise, but it provides complete generality for power users.

Examples

The following sections present some illustrative examples to help upskill users and demonstrate the potential of this powerful modelling feature.

•J04a - Follower Force illustrates the application of arbitrary loading. The direction of the applied force is dependent on the instantaneous position of the point of application. The use of custom code enables the definition of a force which can track/follow the direction of response, via continuous adjustment of the global force vector.

•J04b - Sphere Contact illustrates how to model contact with a spherical surface, a modelling feature which is not currently available as standard in Flexcom. This is a more complicated example which involves augmentation of both the global stiffness matrix and the global force vector.

•Mass matrix - although not part of a formal example, this section provides some sample source code which enables you to write the global mass matrix to the output file.