Freezing FE Iteration at specific candidate

[JanPio]

Hello,
we currently use HyperSizer 7.3.50 with ANSYS 18.2 in order to find the most promising design of various design concepts for a metallic fuselage-wing-connection. Our data structure is as follows:

• Each design concept has a separate subfolder, containing the *.cdb, *.s01 (.s02,…) and *.rst files of the initial ANSYS run.
• We have one single HyperSizer database *.hdb, in which each of the 20 design concepts is a separate HyperSizer “FEA Project”.

Problem: The iteration process with HyperFEA works in general, but we recently experienced some freezing FE iteration processes. Details:

• The iteration stops at one specific candidate and does not continue for hours, so we stop it manually.
• It occurs after several successful FE iteration steps, so not directly in the first one.
• After aborting a frozen FE iteration step, we start the iteration process again and it gets stuck again. It always stops during “Running HyperSizer…” and at the exact same component and candidate.
• There is no error message.

Workaround: Compacting the database sometimes helped repairing the files and those iterations finished successfully afterwards, but some still have the problem. We observed that changing step sizes in the Sizing Form helped: it did not get stuck anymore.
Question: What is the root of the stuck processes and how to solve it? Is HS encountering memory problems, maybe because of the many projects in the database?

Thank you in advance,
Jan

[Brent]

Hi Jan,

To help us better answer your question, we will contact you directly to get more information.

Thanks,

Brent

[JanPio]

For all who have similar problems, ours is solved: we used the FEA loads extraction method "element based" (can be changed in the Sizing Form --> FEA Loads). Changing it to "peak element filtered" made the iteration process finish successfully. Apparently this specific component was overchallenged with calculating every single element.
Thanks again Brent.