Comments

• Victor

  May 2020

  Yes. Although the initial conditions are quite limited so you may need to accelerate the object from stationary using gravity.
  
  Prepare to spend a lot of time on it, especially getting contact to converge. So start with a very coarse mesh and only refine it when all the nonlinear effects like contact, buckling, plasticity, etc. are working.
• rwhirley

  May 2020

  Agree on starting with a coarse model so you can quickly scope out the right timescale and debug any model definition errors early. Make the target surface 10x stiffer than the structure so it's effectively rigid to get things working. I like to begin with all elastic materials, just to keep things simple, then add plasticity once the contact is working.
  
  Also, plan to use very small timesteps in the nonlinear dynamic analysis (with ccx). I typically start with something in the 50 microseconds (50E-6 sec) range, depending on the drop height and the stiffness of the structure, and set this as the max time increment so it won't get increased during the pre-impact drop. Timesteps too large can cause the contact to fail (too much interpenetration).
  
  Start simple, gradually add complexity, and plan enough time to get meaningful results. It's not too difficult that way.