Patent Document ID: 9292632
Application ID: 13895584
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method of providing detailed rigid wall force summary in a time-marching simulation of a vehicle colliding with a rigid wall comprising: receiving a finite element analysis (FEA) model and a rigid wall definition in a computer system having a FEA application module installed thereon, the FEA model representing a vehicle and the rigid wall definition, wherein the FEA model and the rigid wall definition are to be used in a time-marching simulation of the vehicle colliding with the rigid wall, the FEA model contains a plurality of nodes connected by a plurality of finite elements being organized into one or more groups, and the rigid wall definition contains one or more segments representing corresponding spatial locations on the rigid wall; determining whether a list of the groups desirous to have a detailed rigid wall force (RWF) summary is defined; if not, creating the list by including all structural parts of the vehicle; calculating one or more contribution weighting factors for each of the nodes for one or more groups in the list, respectively; starting the time-marching simulation that contains a plurality of solution cycles in time; at each of the solution cycles, calculating a nodal force contribution of each of the nodes in accordance with a node type and accumulating the calculated nodal force contribution modified with the corresponding contribution weighting factor into the detailed RWF summary under corresponding one of the groups for corresponding one of the segments, wherein said accumulating the calculated nodal force contribution modified with the corresponding contribution weighting factor into the detailed RWF summary further comprises: summing up the calculated nodal force contributions modified with nodal contribution weighting factor for each of the groups that has one or more nodes that contact with the rigid wall for each of the segments; obtaining rigid wall force of a particular segment by summing up the calculated nodal force contribution modified with nodal contribution weighting factor for all nodes that are in contact with the particular segment; obtaining total rigid wall force by summing up all of the rigid wall forces for all of the segments; and obtaining total forces imparted by a particular group to the rigid wall by summing up the forces imparted by said particular group on all of the segments; and presenting the detailed RWF summary after the time-marching simulation has completed.