Using the ACP – LS-DYNA workflow, you can analyze composite structures with respect to crash and impact. This workflow has been improved for various areas in recent releases. It supports the transfer of shell models as *ELEMENT_SHELL and solid models as *ELEMENT_TSHELL between the two applications (see Solid Modeling and Solid Models). Assemblies are supported as well (see Assembly) .

Figure 1.36: Sample Workflow of ACP – LS-DYNA within Workbench

Several LS-DYNA material cards are available in Engineering Data. Once defined, they are automatically transferred to the LS-DYNA solver. This allows you to define a material card for each material. Among others, the following composite specific material cards are supported:

The LS-DYNA analysis type (system C in the figure above) creates an LS-DYNA model (.k file) from the Mechanical model, including lay-up definitions from ACP, and runs the LS-DYNA solver in the background. LS-DYNA features which are not available in Workbench can be added to the model through LS PrePost by doing the following: Export the LS-DYNA input file (use the Write Input File Tool in Mechanical, as shown below) and load it in LS PrePost to further pre-process the model. An alternative is to use the Commands object and the Input File Include constraint. For more details, see How to use LS-DYNA in Workbench in the LS-DYNA User's Guide.

Figure 1.37: Create an LS-DYNA Keyword (.k) File from the Workbench Model within Mechanical