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Overview

MCalibration® is a software tool to help select and calibrate advanced, nonlinear material models for finite element (FE) simulation. MCalibration uses powerful nonlinear search algorithms to quickly find the best material parameters for experimental test data. MCalibration can be used to calibrate any built-in material model in Abaqus, ANSYS Mechanical, LS-DYNA, MSC.Marc, and a limited set from COMSOL Multiphysics. It can also be used to calibrate all of the advanced nonlinear models in the PolyUMod® library. MCalibration can help you match your material model to a complex set of test data over a wide range of experimental conditions.

Tutorials and Manuals

Material Model Calibration

Working with any material model requires determining appropriate material parameters from experimental data. This can be challenging when the advanced material model is non-linear. To facilitate the parameter extraction, Polymer FEM has developed MCalibration. This software application enables semi-automatic extraction of pertinent material parameters from experimental data. The MCalibration application is provided with the PolyUMod user-material libraries, but is also commercially available through a stand-alone license. Contact us if you would like a quotation for the software.

The MCalibration application can extract the material parameters for all native material models in Abaqus and ANSYS, and all material models in the PolyUMod library.

Here are some of the key features of MCalibration:

  • Available for both Windows and Linux computers.
  • Can extract material parameters for the all material models in the PolyUMod library. The PolyUMod library is available for Abaqus/Standard, Abaqus/Explicit, ANSYS, LS-DYNA, MSC.Marc, and COMSOL Multiphysics.
  • Can extract the material parameters for many common hyperelastic and metal plasticity models.
  • Can extract the material parameters for all native material models in Abaqus and ANSYS.
  • The optimal set of material parameters can be exported into text files that can be directly read by Abaqus, ANSYS, and LS-DYNA.
  • The parameter extraction is more powerful than the built-in features of Abaqus and ANSYS in that it allows for multiple experimental tests with different weight functions.
  • Can calibrate viscoelastic, viscoplastic, and anistropic material models.
  • Can quickly check the stability of any supported material model.
  • Can perform virtual experiments in different loading modes, and different stress or strain histories.
  • The calibration can be performed on a subset of the material parameters, and parameters can have upper and lower bounds.
  • Most material models can be calibrated without any call to Abaqus or ANSYS. MCalibration does not require that a FE program is installed on the computer.

Experimental Testing

In order to run an FE simulation it is necessary to specify three types of input:

  • The geometry of the part
  • The load and boundary conditions
  • The material behaviors

Often the most difficult of these is the specification of the material behavior, especially for highly non-linear materials, such as polymers.

The specification of a material behavior requires a suitable material model calibrated using the right type of accurate experimental data

Getting the right type of experimental data that is relevant, accurate, and completely specifies the material response is a necessary input to the material model calibration. It is not trivial to determine what experiments should be performed, and it is not trivial to run the experiments in a proper way. In our test lab we have developed “smart” testing programs for all types of engineering polymers (elastomers, thermoplastics, and thermosets). These testing programs are unique in that they obtain the necessary information for advanced material model calibration using a small set of experimental tests.