General

Stress Strain Plate

This problem illustrates how to apply boundary conditions for plane strain and plane stress in a 3D model of a plate with a hole under uniform tensile loading, analyzed using implicit quasi-statics. Plane strain reflects mid-thickness stresses in a thick plate, while plane stress represents through-thickness stresses in a thin plate.

Bolt Preload

This example demonstrates five methods for preloading a bolt—thermal strain, artificial strain, the preload command, prescribed displacement, and a spring—using a simplified assembly of a loading block, bolt head, and theoretical nut.

Automated Adaptive Preloading

This example showcases automated preload application in analyses to meet target conditions, featuring two analyses: one using artificial strain to achieve target clamping forces in bolts via automatic and subroutine methods, and the other determining the force needed to deform a nonlinear part by a specified amount.

Overlap Removal Methods

This example demonstrates two methods for removing overlap between two rings: overlap removal and artificial strain combined with general contact.

Frame Indifference

The Frame Indifference Test evaluates the self-consistency of a constitutive model under rigid rotations and translations by applying a uniaxial artificial strain to a cube-shaped element, followed by an arbitrary rotation.

Cohesive Zones

This example illustrates the creation and use of cohesive elements in Sierra/SM, which can be implemented in the input mesh as a contact friction model or generated on-the-fly using XFEM.

Nonlocal Averaging

This problem demonstrates nonlocal averaging to calculate average nodal accelerations in a cantilever beam under a tip load. The nonlocal acceleration is computed at the free end within a spherical region, and results are compared to the global acceleration of the beam and local acceleration at a single node to highlight evaluation differences.