The Difference Between Linear and Nonlinear FEA

24/09/2019 The Difference Between Linear and Nonlinear FEA?
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I remember my rst presentation regarding my Ph.D. It was my rst year
on the doctoral program, and I was starting to be on a rst-name basis 
with people that were my teachers just a semester ago. I went to the
Correct mesh size –
a quick guide!
middle of the room and started talking about shell buckling… the problem posted on March 29, 2017
was everything I did was calculated with LBA. I simply didn’t know the

difference between linear and nonlinear FEA! Don’t worry… you don’t have Geometrically
to follow my mistakes! nonlinear analysis –
how does it work?
posted on March 26, 2017
Linear Finite Element Method simpli es a lot of things. For instance, the
material will never yield resulting in unrealistically high stresses in your 
4 main nonlinear
model. Also, you may not predict buckling or membrane state (or do it
material models –
very poorly) because nonlinear geometry is not taken into account. general version
Nonlinear FEA, when de ned correctly, takes care of all those problems posted on February 21, 2017
for you. 
Linear buckling in
If you want to avoid blunders I did as a Ph.D. researcher… de nitely read plain language!
posted on January 2, 2017
on!
Linear or nonlinear geometry

This may not be the most “obvious” part of the nonlinearity but I start
here… because this is how I have learned nonlinear FEA. You see, when
you use linear analysis solver assumes that you will be within “small
deformations”. This actually means that 2 assumptions are made:
Assumption 1: Deformation do not impact how the structure

behaves (i.e. noting enters membrane state)
Assumption 2: There is no stability failure
The two above are big ones… unless you are designing something solid in
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shape. I mean, if you really have to analyze a stocky solid it won’t enter a
with it.
membrane state, and it won’t buckle either. In such a case nonlinear
Ok
geometry won’t do you any good…
https://enterfea.com/difference-between-linear-and-nonlinear-fea/ 1/15
24/09/2019 The Difference Between Linear and Nonlinear FEA? | Enterfea
… funny thing is, it won’t do you any harm either! If you use a nonlinear
geometry analysis with something that behaves linearly… you will get the Stay
same outcomes as from linear analysis. But of course, the setup and the newsletter
analysis itself will take some additional time!

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Things start to become more complicated when
things deform… a LOT! Your name
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Imagine you have a string attached on both ends to the wall. If you put a
load on it, the string will de ect like crazy! Simply put if you would treat it
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as a beam, such a beam is so “weak” due to bending that calculated
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But it’s actually not so simple to de ect so much. If the horizontal

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movement on both supports is blocked… string has to get longer to
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deform downward with this nice arc. Maybe even much longer!
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Elongation is not “free” – you have to apply a normal force to elongate
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something. And with this in mind, the string “resists” getting longer and
longer by developing the normal force inside it. This limits the FEA Design Tips
deformation and allows the string to actually carry the load. You use this
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phenomenon every time you hang your laundry to dry!
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While seemingly obvious, the linear analysis does not see this happen. • Linear Analysis
Simply put, in linear analysis deformations of the system does not impact
• Nonlinear Analysis
its response. In other words, the string gets longer to allow for very big
deformations, but this does not generate tension in the string. And hence, • Meshing
you get really stupid outcomes!
• Boundary Conditions
• Post Processing
Being stable
• Contact
• Linear Buckling
The second problem is with stability. As you most likely know you can
pull a crate on a string, but you can’t push the crate with the same string. Case Studies
What would happen is that the string would simply tangle up, and not
with it. Structural Design Topics:
carry any compression. In an extremely simpli ed form, this is bucking.
Ok • Structural Steel
• Stability
• Connections
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In essence, everything that is slender (thin and relatively long) have a essentials
“critical load”. When you apply this load, instead of nicely carrying it with
compression the element will simply “buckle”. Usually, this will look like
course!
your element simply “bends into an arc”. This actually is a form of First Name
failure… sadly linear analysis will gladly load your element way above its
critical load and display nice results. Completely ignoring the fact that
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your element actually failed way before the applied load level!
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Sometimes, buckling can catch even experienced professionals by
materials. More
surprise. Take a look at the shell below. Maximal stress is 140MPa (way
below the yield of 355MPa). However what you don’t see here is, that Start learning FEA today!
such a shell buckles under the compressive stress of around 80-100MPa
(in this case) and that it will fail under load much smaller than the one
obtained in the analysis… This means that we just failed to estimate the
maximal capacity. Sadly, based on the outcomes of linear analysis alone,
we can think that our shell can be loaded much more than in reality! I
know, it’s scary!
with it.
Ok
LBA to the rescue!
Luckily for us, there are other analyses we can perform to check if we will
lose stability or not. Without a doubt, a Linear Bifurcation Analysis (LBA)
is the most popular choice. This is still a “linear” analysis (as the name
suggest), but it’s not a “stress analysis” in a sense. What it does is, that it
tells you how many times you have to increase the load in your model to
cause the ideal critical failure.
This means, that if you have a beam you can use LBA to see where it will
fail due to instability. A pretty nifty trick!
But there is a big problem in this paradise. As I already told you LBA is
linear by de nition. This means for instance, that it cannot see nonlinear
geometry in the model. So… your model cannot enter “membrane state”
we already discussed, and all pressure loaded plates are bent (not in
tension) regardless of their deformations. This means, that LBA will often
nd some really bizarre failure modes, that are completely unrealistic –
like those:
The above hopper is loaded with pressure acting to the outside. You don’t
have to be an expert to see that something is off here. There are relatively
thin plates between stiffeners, and those would enter the membrane
state in reality. But since LBA “doesn’t know that” it produces such funky
instability failure modes that are completely impossible to occur in reality.
Sadly, this is not all. Since buckling is a geometrically nonlinear
with it.
phenomenon, LBA can often be wrong. While for beams it does a pretty
Ok
good job, I wouldn’t trust LBA outcomes for shells! Sadly, LBA will often
overpredict capacity – sometimes by a big margin!
In both of the above cases, you will need a nonlinear analysis to deal with
such problems.
To sum it up:
LBA can warn you that you have stability problems in your structure.
Sadly, it cannot take nonlinear geometry into account (among other
effects), which results in some problems. If nonlinear geometry would
impact the outcomes you may either get a weird “impossible” failure
modes… or LBA will greatly overestimate the capacity of your shell
model (and this is a real problem!).
This is why in a lot of cases (i.e. shell structures) you should use
nonlinear analysis instead!
Want to learn more about LBA? De nitelly read this!
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Nonlinear geometry in analysis
We already discussed Linear Static (usually denoted as LA for Linear

Analysis) and Linear Bifurcation Analysis (LBA). Those would be the
“linear” analysis as far as geometry is concerned. It is only fair to discuss
the nonlinear approach now!
Simply put nonlinear geometry can take into account all those effects I
just described. In a pretty extreme situation, the outcomes may look like
this:
with it.
Ok
What the analysis does, is that it divides the loads to small portions
(called increments), and then it applies those increments to your model
“one by one”. Thanks to this, the analysis “see” how the model behave
and take all the nonlinearities into account.
This is a completely different league of analysis – possibilities are really

awesome! But… (there is always a “but” right?) setting up a nonlinear
analysis, and computing itself takes much more time. In order to include
membrane and stability effects, you have to pay in preparation and
learning time. Still, I think it’s well worth the investment! Especially since
you can later animate your outcomes like this (which is super cool for
Customer presentations… not to mention blogging :P):
Nonlinear geometry in a nutshell:
Nonlinear buckling (as geometrically nonlinear analysis is often

called) takes into account membran effects. It can also analyze
stability failures (if set up properly). Simply put, it’s a way more
powerful algorithm than Linear Analysis (also including LBA).
The problem is, that the setup and computing time takes much longer
than in case of linear analysis. Not to mention that you actually need
to own software that is capable of doing such an analysis… and you
need to know how to set it up!
Want to learn more about linear and nonlinear

buckling?
De nitely check my free online course! I think it will be a perfect t for

you!
Free nonlinear FEA

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Linear or nonlinear material

All right, now we are talking!
I get the feeling that nonlinear material is something that you initially
thought when I started discussing nonlinear analysis… and for a good
reason!
There is only one assumption I want to discuss here. It adds to the 2

assumptions for linear geometry we already discussed:
Assumption 3: Relation between stress and strain in the material is

linear
This doesn’t sound too bad, does it? Sadly, I think this assumption is
responsible for a lot of woes – I believe it is mostly responsible for the
fact that people don’t trust their FEA outcomes. It also causes most
problems in analyzing FEA outcomes and drawing conclusions from
those!
Let’s take a closer look!
Material straight like a line!
Firstly, let’s take a look at a typical strain-stress curve. This is the chart
that shows you what is the relation between stress and strain in the
material. If you ever studied anything slightly connected with steel
structures you most likely saw this:
with it.
Ok
This is how typically mild steel behaves. If you would put a steel
specimen into a hydraulic press for a tension test… basically this is what
you would get. To make it easier to imagine just switch stress for load
and strain for elongation and you are ne : )
The problem is, that modeling such a complex behavior takes time and
effort. And it’s relatively easy to see this beautiful straight elastic part of
the chart. I don’t know about you, but it sure does make me want to use a
linear approach!
This is a really neat approach. We don’t have to “care” for all the
nonlinearities, while within the linear zone, the answers we get are just
perfect! Awesome stuff!
But you already know where I’m going with this… After all, we can “enter”
the nonlinear part of the chart when the strain in our material gets high
enough. Then the problems begin.
Initially, this may not look like a big issue. I mean a rule could be made
that “if I ever get stress higher than yield this is a failure”. You know the
reasoning being that if a big portion of your model will yield it would fail
anyway. But there is a big issue with this approach, that comes with more
complex geometries than a at steel piece: stress concentrations!
Concentrate on the solution with it.
Ok
Whenever you have a stiffener end abruptly in your model, or maybe a

weird opening, those regions produce higher strains. But those are
extremely localized to very small areas. And the question is… how to
interpret outcomes in such cases? Below you can see a model that at
most is barely loaded at all… but over the stiffener, the stress
concentrates to a total value of 1800MPa:
So, did this part fail? Perhaps, after all, the dark blue is around 450MPa.
But since this is a linear analysis we can easily scale this down. What if
the maximal stress would be “only” 900MPa, while the dark blue would be
225MPa for a steel grade S355?
On one hand, the “average stress” (however you wish to de ne it here)

would be way below yield. On the same note that “stupid” dot over the
stiffener would be almost 3 times over the yield. How to interpret
outcomes in such a case?
The short answer is… you can’t!
Linear analysis is not meant to be used like that. Sure, you could argue a
lot about whether the stress in the concentration is “allowable or not” but
in the end, it would be a judgment call. If you would like to be “certain”,
you would have to use nonlinear material!
If you don’t believe me, ask yourself such questions:
Assuming such stress is acceptable (this part would not fail in

nonlinear analysis BTW), how big this “red zone” would have to be
in order for me to consider this a failure?
How do I wish to analyze the size of the zone in order to prove that
it is “still acceptable” while a slightly bigger one is “not acceptable”
anymore?
What
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about 20%? What is the limit stress in such a case and how can I
with it.
calculate it? Ok
You see, those questions have no answers when you use Linear Analysis.
Only with a nonlinear material, you can make such calls – and this is the
“power” of the nonlinear analysis in this case.
To sum it up:
Linear analysis is spot on with stresses when those are below the
yield point of the material (or other nonlinear behaviors for the
matter). However, if the strains in the material are so high then you
would enter the “nonlinear” part of the stress-strain relationship…
linear outcomes start to go “dumb”. Pretty fast they are “outrageously
stupid”. Sadly, such high strains appear in most models in small areas
around details due to concentrations.
It’s basically impossible to judge if the element capacity is ok based

on such outcomes.
This is why you need to use nonlinear material when dealing with
stresses higher than yield!
Nonlinear material saves the day!
In case of stability issues, we could use LBA to at least “guess” if the

troubles are big or not. Here, there is no “secondary linear analysis” to
help us out.
The only thing you could really do in such a case is to use nonlinear
material. Truth be told there are a LOT of different material models. I’ve
described 4 that I consider “most commonly used” in this article.
Let’s discuss a very simple case here: a bilinear material:
As you can see above, the material takes the elastic (linear) and plastic
properties of the material into account. Such a material would be called
“bi-linear” for obvious reasons. But there are 2 approaches you may have
with it. I guess you most likely heard about “work hardening” – the fact
that
We use some
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to ensure (like
that we givesteel
you theand
bestother metals)
experience actually
on our website.strengthen
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under high strains. with it.
Ok
You may or may not want to use it in your model. Usually, in my design, I
don’t want to go into the strengthening zone of the material. I was taught
at university that this is a “desperate” zone if you are doing a new design
(but it has its uses when you need to strengthen something that already
exists). In such a case my material model would look like this:
But if I would expect very high strains (“climbing” the hardening slope) I
might use such a material model:
This way, I can take the work hardening into account (in a simpli ed way).
I usually go with no hardening, but I guess this will comes down to what
you are trying to do. In my models, where strains are very localized (due
to stress concentrations as we discussed above) the difference between
those two materials is minimal – I actually checked that once.
Nonlinear material summary
In essence nonlinear material just “makes your life easier”. You don’t
have to wonder if the stress you got in that pesky stress
concentration is too high or not. Instead, you can just check plastic
strain, and see if there was any possibility of plastic collapse and you
are ne. Both are “clearly” de ned so judgment calls are rarely
needed. with it.
Ok
Of course, there is a downside as well. As with all nonlinear analysis

setting the analysis up takes a bit longer, and computing de nitely
takes longer. It seems you just have to wait for the better results : )
Want to know how nonlinear material works? Take a read!
Do I need nonlinear analysis in my

case?
I want to wrap it up with the most common question. Now you know the
differences between linear and nonlinear approach, but the question
remains: how about my case?
It’s impossible to discuss this in one post, so I’ve made a whole series
about this topic on my blog. You will nd there not only a owchart that
will guide you in the choice, but also a complete guide on how to
approach each step of the way. I’m sure you will nd that useful!
DO I NEED DO I NEED DO I NEED

NONLINEAR NONLINEAR CONTACT IN MY
GEOMETRY? MATERIAL? ANALYSIS?
Common questions about linear vs

nonlinear FEA
Is this stress above yield acceptable?
Well… there is no answer to that. Firstly, the stress above yield in the
linear analysis just indicates that there will be yielding involved in reality.
This in itself is not a tragedy, but it doesn’t mean this is always
acceptable. My favorite example is:
Imagine you have 2 specimen. First is a rod under uniform tension,

the second is the same rode under bending. Is yield acceptable?
Well for the rode in tension it’s not! After all the entire cross-section is
under the same stress. If you allow it to yield, the rod will fail.
On another hand in bending only the outer parts of the same cross-
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perfectly allowable in design codes. Even more, when you use the
“plastic section modulus” in design (default in most Ok
codes for steel
elements in class 1 and 2) then you allow your cross-section to yield

substantially!
What the above shows? It only shows that whether stress higher than
yield in the linear analysis is allowed, depends on what model are you
analyzing! There is no one- ts-all answer! Remember, any time you are in
doubt… just use the nonlinear material and be certain!
Is using linear geometry safe?
No, not really. I can imagine where this comes from… after all, you get
higher deformations and bigger stresses when elements can’t enter
membrane state. For those, outcomes would be “worse” in LA. But don’t
forget that those elements are attached to something! If they will enter
the membrane stare a big horizontal force will be applied at supports
(and you won’t get it in LA!). This means that you will be missing a major
load component.
On another hand, if you make an element that “survives” bending in LA…

most likely it won’t enter a membrane state. So there is something to be
said about that as well. If the deformations are small* you should be ne
with LA, as long as buckling is not an issue.
* I know “small” is not extremely precise. Most likely you have a code to
follow that should de ne “allowable deformations”. I think those could be
treated as “small enough”. If you don’t have such a code my wild guess
would be something like “small means length of the element divided by
300” or something similar. It’s best to make some tests with linear and
nonlinear analysis and estimate your limits yourself of course : )
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10 Comments
MEHANI Youcef March 5, 2019 at 7:44 am - Reply
Nice .
Łukasz Skotny March 5, 2019 at 10:57 am - Reply

I’m glad that you like it : ) with it.
Ok
Luis March 16, 2019 at 9:19 pm - Reply
Really nice article!
Łukasz Skotny March 17, 2019 at 4:44 am - Reply
I’m really happy that you like it Luis!

Thanks for the comment : )
Rahul shelar August 31, 2019 at 5:28 pm - Reply
Well explained.
Łukasz Skotny August 31, 2019 at 6:36 pm - Reply
Thank you Rahul!
I’m really glad that you like it 🙂
All the best

Ł
Manish Kumar Tiwari September 6, 2019 at 7:27 am - Reply
Awesome!!!!!!! Getting lot of help from Your Blogs……………..
Łukasz Skotny September 6, 2019 at 7:46 am - Reply
I’m happy that you like them Manish!
All the best

Ł
Duc Nguyen Huu September 6, 2019 at 8:57 am - Reply
All your information and explanations are really great and

usefully.
Łukasz Skotny September 6, 2019 at 11:55 am - Reply
Thank you 🙂
I’m really glad that you like the post 🙂
All the best!

Ł
with it.
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24/09/2019 The Difference Between Linear and Nonlinear FEA?

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Test your FEA skills! only 3 min.

The Difference Between Linear MOST POPULAR

Linear or nonlinear geometry

Assumption 1: Deformation do not impact how the structure

analysis itself will take some additional time!

But it’s actually not so simple to de ect so much. If the horizontal

Basic Engineering Concepts

I agree to receive marketing

LBA to the rescue!

Want to learn more about LBA? De nitelly read this!

Share this post with

Nonlinear geometry in analysis

We already discussed Linear Static (usually denoted as LA for Linear

This is a completely different league of analysis – possibilities are really

Nonlinear geometry in a nutshell:

Nonlinear buckling (as geometrically nonlinear analysis is often

Want to learn more about linear and nonlinear

De nitely check my free online course! I think it will be a perfect t for

Free nonlinear FEA

I agree to receive marketing materials.

Discover nonlinear FEA

Linear or nonlinear material

There is only one assumption I want to discuss here. It adds to the 2

Assumption 3: Relation between stress and strain in the material is

Let’s take a closer look!

Material straight like a line!

Whenever you have a stiffener end abruptly in your model, or maybe a

On one hand, the “average stress” (however you wish to de ne it here)

The short answer is… you can’t!

If you don’t believe me, ask yourself such questions:

Assuming such stress is acceptable (this part would not fail in

It’s basically impossible to judge if the element capacity is ok based

Nonlinear material saves the day!

In case of stability issues, we could use LBA to at least “guess” if the

Let’s discuss a very simple case here: a bilinear material:

Nonlinear material summary

Of course, there is a downside as well. As with all nonlinear analysis

Want to know how nonlinear material works? Take a read!

Do I need nonlinear analysis in my

DO I NEED DO I NEED DO I NEED

Common questions about linear vs

Imagine you have 2 specimen. First is a rod under uniform tension,

elements in class 1 and 2) then you allow your cross-section to yield

Is using linear geometry safe?

On another hand, if you make an element that “survives” bending in LA…

Liked the article? Share it with

MEHANI Youcef March 5, 2019 at 7:44 am - Reply

Łukasz Skotny March 5, 2019 at 10:57 am - Reply

Really nice article!

Łukasz Skotny March 17, 2019 at 4:44 am - Reply

I’m really happy that you like it Luis!

Rahul shelar August 31, 2019 at 5:28 pm - Reply

Łukasz Skotny August 31, 2019 at 6:36 pm - Reply

Thank you Rahul!

I’m really glad that you like it 🙂

All the best

Manish Kumar Tiwari September 6, 2019 at 7:27 am - Reply

Awesome!!!!!!! Getting lot of help from Your Blogs……………..

Łukasz Skotny September 6, 2019 at 7:46 am - Reply

I’m happy that you like them Manish!

All the best