In the Automotive industry vehicles impact requirements are growing in importance day by day and this is demonstrated by the development and extensive use of dynamic simulation programs.
Among these softwares, highly specific for this kind of applications, PAM-CRASH, RADIOSS and LS-DYNA can be mentioned as the most important ones. These simulation programs are based on finite elements and on direct and explicit methods of time integration, fundamentally Lagrangian (in Lagrangian formulation the mesh is "incrusted" in the material and it distorts while tied to it).
The most relevant features of these programs, which separate them from the rest, are the following:
The explicit method is highly effective from a computational point of view and this is the reason for being the most adapted method used for the simulation of dynamic highly non linear phenomena (car crashes).
Advanced contact algorithms are used, and they can simulate the most complex contact - impact interactions between the different parts of the model.
They allow to introduce the material behaviour dependency on the strain-rate.