ANSYS ACT Extension: Energy plot

Important note: Development discontinued

Starting ANSYS version 2022R2 were added energy probes, which can be used for evaluation of the time histories of the energies. Therefore we have decided to discontinue development of the ANSYS ACT extension. Hence, the lastest supported version Energy Plot of is ANSYS 2022R1.

Demonstration video (version 1.2)

Download

The ANSYS ACT App Energy Plot can be downloaded and used for your own purposes.

Current release

Version History

Documentation of the ANSYS ACT Extension

The extension provides the time history data using of APDL commands which are added to the ANSYS input deck (ds.dat). The extension uses following APDL commands internally:

• TRNOPT (only the Transient Structural analysis) with option EngCalc set to YES (TRNOPT,FULL,,,,,HHT,,0,YES),
• OUTRES with the option VENG (OUTRES,VENG,ALL).

The energy data are exported using command ENERSOL. This command will ensure, that the following energy data are available:

• SENE Potential energy (stiffness energy)
• KENE Kinetic energy
• DENE Damping energy
• WEXT Work done by external load
• AENE Artificial energy due to hourglass control/drill stiffness or due to contact stabilization damping
• STEN Artificial energy due to nonlinear stabilization

Setup of the Extension

To activate the energy plots, it is necessary to insert the object Energy Setup via the toolbar (see Figure 1) or via context menu into the outline tree of the desired structural or transient analysis.

The object Energy Setup has the following options in its Details View:

Viewing Results using the ACT Extension

To review the results, insert the object Energy Post via the toolbar or via the context menu into solution section of the outline tree. In the Details View of this object, you can choose which energies you want to display and customize the options of the chart, see Figure 3.

When user activates the Energy Post object, the chart and the table with the energy data are shown in the Worksheet and the Data View sub-windows, see Figure 4 below.

Restrictions and Limitations of the ACT App Energy Plot (related to version 2.1)

• Currently only Static Structural and Transient Structural (with Full method) analyses are supported.
• If you want to use command TRNOPT in an APDL Command Block, it is necessary to set the parameter EngCalc to YES.
• If you want to change your OUTRES definitions in an APDL Command Block it is necessary to use OUTRES,VENG,ALL.
• If the analysis was not finished due to non-convergence or stopped the post-processing part will not be executed and the energy plot will not be available. If you still want to evaluate energies you can insert APDL Commands in the Solution object with following content:

/COM, **************************************************
FINISH
/POST26
*GET,enerStepsCount,ACTIVE,0,SET,NSET
*DIM,enerValues,array,enerStepsCount,7


ENERSOL, 2,SENE,,SENE ! Potential energy (stiffness energy)
ENERSOL, 3,KENE,,KENE ! Kinetic energy
ENERSOL, 4,DENE,,DENE ! Damping energy
ENERSOL, 5,WEXT,,WEXT ! Work done by external load
ENERSOL, 6,AENE,,AENE ! Artificial energy due to hourglass control/drill stiffness or due to contact stabilization damping
ENERSOL, 7,STEN,,STEN ! Artificial energy due to nonlinear stabilization

vget,enerValues(1,1),1,,
vget,enerValues(2,2),2,,
vget,enerValues(3,3),3,,
vget,enerValues(4,4),4,,
vget,enerValues(5,5),5,,
vget,enerValues(6,6),6,,
vget,enerValues(7,7),7,,

*CFOPEN,'outEnersol','txt',' ' 
*VWRITE,enerValues(1,1),enerValues(1,2),enerValues(1,3),enerValues(1,4),enerValues(1,5),enerValues(1,6),enerValues(1,7)
(7E16.8) 
*CFCLOS 

enerStepsCount=
enerValues=

finish
/post1
/COM, **************************************************