Patent Document ID: 20090299702
Application ID: 12127095
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A method of limiting contact penetration in numerical simulation of non-linear response of a structure, the method comprises: defining a finite element analysis (FEA) model of the structure based on initial geometry of the structure, wherein the FEA model includes a plurality of nodes and a plurality of elements; performing a time-marching implicit FEA of the FEA model, the time-marching implicit FEA results comprise a plurality of solutions of the non-linear response of the structure at respective time steps, wherein each of the solutions requires at least one iteration to compute and wherein the non-linear response of the structure includes an updated geometry of the structure; determining a search direction at each of the at least one iteration; calculating a contact penetration parameter in the search direction using the non-linear response of the structure obtained in immediate prior iteration; and determining a minimum energy imbalance location, in the search direction, scaled by the CPP to substantially minimize contact penetration of the structure, wherein the location is the particular one of the plurality of the solutions of the non-linear responses of the structure.