Adding Automatic Step Stabilization

1. From the Stabilization Type options, select Damping.
2. By default, the initial value of the damping factor is typically equal to the value that would be used for automatic stabilization with a constant damping factor. Alternatively, you can specify the initial Damping factor directly. The damping factor is adjusted based on the convergence history and the accuracy tolerance through the step.
3. Specify the Energy ratio tolerance, which is the maximum allowable ratio of the stabilization energy to the total strain energy. If the ratio exceeds the accuracy tolerance, the damping factor at each individual element is adjusted to ensure that the ratio of the stabilization energy to the strain energy is less than the accuracy tolerance on both the global and local element level.

In most applications the first increment of the step is stable without the need to apply damping. The damping factor is then determined in such a way that the dissipated energy for a given increment with characteristics similar to the first increment is a small fraction of the extrapolated strain energy. The fraction is called the dissipated energy fraction and has a default value of 2.0 × 10⁻⁴.

1. From the Stabilization Type options, select Energy fraction.
2. Specify the dissipated Energy fraction to be used in the automatic damping algorithm.
3. Specify the Energy ratio tolerance, which is the maximum allowable ratio of the stabilization energy to the total strain energy.

You can propagate the damping factors from the immediately preceding general step to the current step. If you select Propagated stabilization when there is no preceding step, then no artificial stabilization is applied.

1. From the Stabilization Type options, select Propagated.
2. Specify the Energy ratio tolerance, which is the maximum allowable ratio of the stabilization energy to the total strain energy.