Model both simple and extremely complex scenarios with high precision
Ansys LS-DYNA stands as the foremost explicit simulation software in the industry, perfect for a diverse array of applications such as drop tests, impact and penetration analyses, crashes, occupant safety evaluations, and beyond.
Simulate Material Response to Brief Periods of Intense Load
Ansys LS-DYNA is the world’s most widely used explicit simulation program, capable of modeling the response of materials to short periods of intense loading. It features a variety of elements, contact formulations, material models, and other controls, allowing for detailed simulation of complex models.
As a fully integrated simulation tool for modeling components and systems, Ansys Motion gives fast and precise analysis for both rigid and flexible bodies using a single solver. System motion performance, stress-safety analysis, heat transfer, vibration, and fatigue are all part of its capabilities. Ansys Motion is the top simulation solution for designing multibody dynamic systems.
Applications of Ansys LS-DYNA
- Explosion / Penetration
- Bird Strike
- Crashworthiness / Airbag Simulations
- Fracture
- Splashing / Hydroplaning / Sloshing
- Incompressible and Compressible Fluids
- Stamping / Forming / Drawing / Forging
- Biomedical and Medical Devices Simulations
- Drop Test of All Forms
- Impacts
- Product Misuse / Severe Loadings
- Product Failure / Fragmentation
- Large Plasticity in Mechanisms
- Sports Equipment Design
- Manufacturing Processes Like Machining / Cutting / Drawing
- Vehicle Crash and Occupant Safety
Ansys LS-DYNA Highlights
LS-DYNA offers a wide range of analyses with exceptionally fast and efficient parallelization.
What’s New
With the 2025 R2 release of Ansys LS-DYNA, material assignment, structured S-ALE meshing, and enhanced postprocessing for batteries and electromagnetics (EM) are introduced.
Material Assignment in LS-DYNA
Assign materials directly to bodies in Ansys Mechanical, avoid duplication with automatic reuse of material cards, and streamline model setup using command snippets—making your simulation workflow faster, more consistent, and easier to manage.
S-ALE Meshing in LS-DYNA
Generate high-quality 2D or 3D structured meshes using control points, visualize them directly in Mechanical, and access advanced solver options—supporting the full range of meshing capabilities at the pre-processing stage for greater accuracy and control.
Battery & EM Postprocessing in LS-DYNA
Postprocessing is now supported for both Batmac and Solid battery models. Electromagnetic results and battery-specific outputs are available directly in Mechanical as user-defined results, enabling deeper insight and easier visualization through Solution, View, and Worksheet tools.
Capabilities
A vast array of capabilities to simulate problems involving extreme deformations.
Engineers can address simulations involving material failure and analyze how the failure progresses through a part or system. Models with numerous parts or surfaces interacting are also easily managed, accurately modeling the interactions and load transfer between complex behaviors. Utilizing computers with higher CPU core counts can significantly reduce solution times.
Key Features
LS-DYNA elements, contact formulations, material models, and other controls allow for the simulation of complex models with precise control over all aspects of the problem.
- Implicit and Explicit Solvers
- Frequency Domain Analysis
- ICFD for Incompressible Fluid
- Electromagnetics Solver
- Multiphysics Solver
- Particle Methods
- Contact – Linear and Nonlinear
- Adaptive Remeshing
- Meshless – SPH and ALE
- Advanced CAE
- Supporting Tools
Implicit and Explicit Solvers
Effortlessly alternate between Implicit and Explicit solvers to accommodate the varying needs of your different simulations.
Frequency Domain Analysis
Frequency domain analysis in LS-Dyna enables users to explore capabilities like frequency response function, steady state dynamics, random vibration, response spectrum analysis, acoustics BEM and FEM, and fatigue SSD and random vibration. These capabilities are invaluable for applications including NVH, acoustic analysis, defense industry, fatigue analysis, and earthquake engineering.
ICFD for Incompressible Fluid
The ICFD solver is a standalone CFD code that features a steady-state solver, transient solver, turbulence model for RANS/LES, free surface flows, and isotropic/anisotropic porous media flow. It is coupled with structural, EM, and thermal solvers.
Electromagnetics Solver
The EM solver addresses the Maxwell equations using FEM and BEM in the Eddy current approximation, suitable for scenarios where electromagnetic wave propagation in air (or vacuum) can be considered instantaneous. Key applications include magnetic metal forming or welding, induced heating, and battery abuse simulation.
Multiphysics Solver
The Multiphysics Solver includes ICFD for incompressible fluids, an electromagnetic solver for battery abuse (EM), and CESE for compressible fluids.
Particle Methods
LS-DYNA offers several particle methods. The AIRBAG_PARTICLE method is used for modeling airbag gas particles, treating the gas as a set of rigid particles in random motion. PARTICLE_BLAST is used for high explosive particles, modeling high explosive gas and air as particle gas. The discrete element method (DEM) is applied in various fields, including agriculture and food handling, chemical and civil engineering, and mining and mineral processing.
Contact – Linear and Nonlinear
In LS-DYNA, contact is defined by identifying locations to be checked for potential penetration of a slave node through a master segment using parts, part sets, segment sets, and/or node sets. Penetrations are searched for using various algorithms each time. In penalty-based contact, when a penetration is detected, a force proportional to the penetration depth is applied to resist and eventually eliminate the penetration. Rigid bodies can be included in any penalty-based contact; however, to ensure realistic force distribution, it is recommended that the mesh defining any rigid body be as fine as that of a deformable body.
Adaptive Remeshing
Several tools are available for local refinement of the volume mesh to better capture mesh-sensitive phenomena, such as turbulent eddies or boundary layer separation reattachment. During geometry setup, users can define surfaces that the mesher will use to specify a local mesh size within the volume. If no internal mesh size is specified, the mesher will use a linear interpolation of the surface sizes that define the volume enclosure.
Meshless SPH
The SPH method in Ansys LS-DYNA® is integrated with finite and discrete element methods, broadening its application to complex problems involving multiphysics interactions such as explosions and fluid-structure interactions.
Meshless ALE
Ansys LS-DYNA offers two distinct classes of mesh-free particle solvers: continuum-based smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and discrete particle solvers including the discrete element method (DEM), particle blast method (PBM), and corpuscular particle method (CPM). These solvers are employed in various applications such as hypervelocity impacts, explosions, friction stir welding, water wading, fracture analysis in car windshields, window glass and composite materials, metal friction drilling, metal machining, and high-velocity impacts on concrete and metal targets.
Advanced CAE
Peridynamics & SPG
The smoothed particle Galerkin (SPG) method is a novel Lagrangian particle approach for simulating severe plastic deformation and material rupture in ductile material failure. On the other hand, the Peridynamics method is highly effective for brittle fracture analysis in isotropic materials and certain composites like CFRP. Both methods share a common feature: modeling 3D material failure using a bond-based failure mechanism. This eliminates the need for material erosion techniques, making the simulation of material failure processes more efficient and stable.
Isogeometric Analysis (IGA)
The isogeometric paradigm uses basis functions from computer-aided design (CAD) for numerical analysis, preserving the actual geometry of CAD parts. This contrasts with finite element analysis (FEA), where the geometry is approximated with polynomials, potentially of higher order. Isogeometric analysis (IGA) has been widely studied to (1) reduce the effort of transitioning between design and analysis representations and (2) achieve higher-order accuracy through the higher-order interelement continuity of spline basis functions used in CAD. LS-DYNA is the first commercial code to support IGA by implementing generalized elements and keywords for non-uniform rational B-splines (NURBS). Many standard FEA capabilities, such as contact, spot-weld models, anisotropic constitutive laws, and frequency domain analysis, are readily available in LS-DYNA, with new features being continuously added.
Advanced CAE
LS-OPT
Ansys LS-OPT is a standalone design optimization and probabilistic analysis package that interfaces with Ansys LS-DYNA. Achieving an optimal design can be challenging due to conflicting design objectives. LS-OPT employs a systematic approach using an inverse process for design optimization: you first specify the criteria, then compute the best design according to a mathematical framework.
Probabilistic analysis is essential when a design is exposed to structural and environmental input variations that cause response variations, potentially leading to undesirable behavior or failure. By using multiple simulations, probabilistic analysis evaluates the impact of input variations on response variations and determines the probability of failure.
Together, design optimization and probabilistic analysis enable you to achieve an optimal product design quickly and easily, saving both time and money.
Typical applications of LS-OPT include:
- Design optimization
- System identification
- Probabilistic analysis
LS-TaSC
LS-TaSC™ is a Topology and Shape Computation tool designed for engineering analysts who need to optimize structures. It works with both the implicit and explicit solvers of LS-DYNA, handling topology optimization of large nonlinear problems involving dynamic loads and contact conditions.
Advanced CAE
Dummies
Anthropomorphic Test Devices (ATDs), commonly known as “crash test dummies,” are life-sized mannequins equipped with sensors that measure forces, moments, displacements, and accelerations. These measurements are used to predict the potential injuries a human might sustain during an impact. Ideally, ATDs should mimic real human behavior while being durable enough to produce consistent results across multiple impacts. Various ATDs are available to represent different human sizes and shapes.
Barriers
LSTC provides several Offset Deformable Barrier (ODB) and Movable Deformable Barrier (MDB) models. These models are developed to correlate with several proprietary tests conducted by our customers, and the data from these tests is not publicly available.
Tires
LSTC has collaborated with FCA to develop tire models that can be downloaded from the LST Models download section. These models are based on a series of material, verification, and component-level tests. The finite element mesh uses 2D CAD data of the tire section, with all major components modeled using 8-noded hexahedron elements. Elastomers are modeled with *MAT_SIMPLIFIED_RUBBER, while the plies are modeled using *MAT_ORTHOTROPIC_ELASTIC.
