solver time

[LightHi]

I am running a simulation in Solidworks. I have 11 grounded bolt fixtures and 14 bolt connectors. The other components have a mixture of 'bonded' and 'no penetration' contact sets. There are 13 contact sets and another 13 component contact sets. There are four parts in the assembly and additional 13 gussets.

My computer has 8 GB memory and the resources seem to be enough (checked performance in task manager)
My solver has been running for the past hour and 40 min. and for at least the past 20 minutes (mayb longer as this is when I checked before) the solver is at 9.1% The details of the solver show it at 100% of 'Automatic global contact search'. There has no change in the memory usage for a looong time. Though task manager shows fluctuating CPU usage.


Now, my question, Should I cancel this analysis or leave it running? Is it stuck for worse?

 

[EngAddict]

Sounds pretty typical for lots of contacts and based on your description I would say it would take a long time to run. RAM is important if you have heaps of nodes but with contacts it is just a waiting game with standard processors.

You can probably rationalise your analysis quite a bit. Some of the contacts could be changed to bonded for simplicity or removed by sub-modelling. Or if you are using surface to surface contacts you could change this to edge to surface. You can add a series of split lines for edge contacts to simulate a full surface.

There may also be options to simplify your geometry and maybe use symmetry if possible.. To check if you can remove some contacts run the simulation really rough with a draft mesh and see which components behave as essentially bonded then change your inputs. Check your reactions and make sure all is good.