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Concept: Understanding Singularities

Understanding Singularities
A solution that results in a theoretically infinite value of stress or deflection is called a singularity. At singular
locations, certain physical quantities cannot be determined accurately. In the case of a structural finite
element model, there are locations where the stresses cannot be calculated properly. There may also be
locations with inaccurate displacements. In thermal analysis, there are locations where the heat flow
becomes infinity. Usually, this problem appears because in the assumptions performed to analyze the
structure, idealizing simplifications have to be done, like ideal linear-elastic material or infinite small loaded
areas. For example, a load on an edge.

In structural analysis, a very simple example is an ideal point load applied on the surface of a solid structure.
The normal stress is the force divided by the area. Since the area of a point is Zero, the normal stress
becomes infinity regardless of the magnitude of the applied force. The theoretically infinite stress then
becomes an arbitrarily large number depending on the element size and p-level of the elements touching the
singular location. Figure 1 shows this problem.

Figure 1 – Stress and Displacement Singularity Near a Point

Load

There are many different situations in which an inaccurate solution may appear in a finite element analysis.
The most important are:

• Point loads and constraints.

• Curve loads and constraints.

• Sharp or reentrant corners of the structure.

These locations can be automatically detected by the Isolate for Exclusion mesh control in Creo Simulate, but
there may be other situations for singularities. Also, the element type used has an influence, as shown in
Figure 2.

Figure 2 – Classification of Singularities for Different Element

and Load Types

Other locations or situations with singularities may include:

• An applied bearing constraint or rigid connection that prevents lateral contraction of the structure due to

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Understanding Singularities Page 2 of 2

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• Curvature jumps in contacts, even if you have tangential transitions.

• Beam-volume connections – they act like a point load.

• Shell-volume connections – they act like a curve load.

If possible, try to set up your model without the listed singularities. Some strategies for this are:

• Replace point or curve loads by loads applied to a small surface.

• Replace a point constraint by a weighted link with the independent side connected to a small circular
area around the initial point, and the dependent node connected to a ground spring with an appropriate
stiffness tensor.

• Apply a radius at a reentrant corner with a radius size like the manufacturing tooling radius size. Note
that with a radius at such a location, stress may also increase compared to the sharp corner results
since the stress in the latter case is arbitrary and just influenced by element size and p-level.

• Use elasto-plastic instead of linear-elastic material when evaluating von Mises stress.

There may be situations in finite element analysis where it is impossible to prevent singularities, or you are
not interested in the solution at the singular location (you already know that the location is not critical). In
these cases, you may want to exclude these locations from the convergence loop. Singularities cause edges
in a model to require a high p-level for convergence, resulting in a longer solution time. You can have a
convergence proof for all the remaining non-singular locations of the structure, and have a more accurate
analysis by preventing errors from unrealistic soft point or edge constraints.

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