Attention

The ShARC HPC cluster was decommissioned on the 30th of November 2023 at 17:00. It is no longer possible for users to access that cluster.

ANSYS LS-DYNA 

Ansys LS-DYNA is the industry-leading explicit simulation software used for applications like drop tests, impact and penetration, smashes and crashes, occupant safety, and more.

ANSYS LS-DYNA can make use of built in MPI to utilize multiple cross node CPU and can scale to hundreds of cores.

Caution

ANSYS users can now use a maximum of 400 concurrent cores, across all devices on campus, including personal machines and HPC clusters, and regardless of the number of ANSYS applications they have open. Please see ANSYS license restrictions for more detail.

Module loading 

After connecting to ShARC (see Establishing a SSH connection), you can start an interactive graphical session or submit a batch job using ANSYS programs by activating them and making them available with one of the module load commands below:

module load apps/ansys/15.0
module load apps/ansys/16.1
module load apps/ansys/17.2
module load apps/ansys/18.0/binary
module load apps/ansys/18.2/binary
module load apps/ansys/19.0/binary
module load apps/ansys/19.1/binary
module load apps/ansys/19.2/binary
module load apps/ansys/19.3/binary
module load apps/ansys/19.4/binary
module load apps/ansys/20.1/binary
module load apps/ansys/20.2/binary
module load apps/ansys/21.1/binary
module load apps/ansys/21.2/binary
module load apps/ansys/22.2/binary

Interactive jobs 

While using a X11 GUI forwarding supported SSH client, an interactive session can be started on ShARC with the qrshx command which supports graphical applications. You can load an ANSYS module above and then use the LS-DYNA executables as below.

The following code can be used in an interactive session to launch a single core ANSYS LS-DYNA process:

module load apps/ansys/22.2/binary

#Set license type and LM server
export LSTC_LICENSE_FILE=network
export LSTC_LICENSE_SERVER=ansyslm.shef.ac.uk
export LSTC_LICENSE=ANSYS

# Add the LS-DYNA executables to the PATH
export PATH=$ANSYSROOT/ansys/bin/linx64/:$PATH

# Add the MPI executables and libs to the PATH / LD_LIBRARY_PATH
# Depending on ANSYS version the MPI paths may require changing.
export PATH=$ANSYSROOT/commonfiles/MPI/Intel/2018.3.222/linx64/bin/:$PATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ANSYSROOT/commonfiles/MPI/Intel/2018.3.222/linx64/lib/:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

# Setup my variables
#
# lsdyna_sp.e is for LS-DYNA single precision.
# lsdyna_dp.e is for LS-DYNA double precision.

lsdyna_dp.e i=i.k memory=50m ncpu=$NSLOTS

Batch jobs 

ANSYS LS-DYNA is capable of running in both MPI and SMP parallel environments.

This necessitates the use of either the smp (up to 16 cores on a single node only) or mpi (as many cores as desired across many nodes) parallel processing environments. To use more than a single core, you should write a batch job script like one of the examples below.

Batch Submission Scripts 

Hint

Use of the #$ -V SGE option will instruct SGE to import your current terminal environment variables to be imported - CAUTION - this may not be desirable and can break job submission if jobs are submitted from an existing interactive job.
Use of the mpi parallel environment to run MPI parallel jobs for Ansys is required if using more than 16 cores on ShARC.
The argument $NSLOTS is a Sun of Grid Engine variable which will return the requested number of cores.

Sample MPI LS-DYNA Batch Job Script

#!/bin/bash
#$ -cwd
#$ -M a.person@sheffield.ac.uk
#$ -m abe
#$ -l h_rt=00:30:00
#$ -l rmem=2G
#$ -pe mpi 4
#$ -N JobName

#Only load ANSYS
module load apps/ansys/22.2/binary

#Set license type and LM server
export LSTC_LICENSE_FILE=network
export LSTC_LICENSE_SERVER=ansyslm.shef.ac.uk
export LSTC_LICENSE=ANSYS

# Add the LS-DYNA executables to the PATH
export PATH=$ANSYSROOT/ansys/bin/linx64/:$PATH

# Add the MPI executables and libs to the PATH / LD_LIBRARY_PATH
# Depending on ANSYS version the MPI paths may require changing.
export PATH=$ANSYSROOT/commonfiles/MPI/Intel/2018.3.222/linx64/bin/:$PATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ANSYSROOT/commonfiles/MPI/Intel/2018.3.222/linx64/lib/:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

MACHINEFILE="machinefile.$JOB_ID"

for host in `cat $PE_HOSTFILE | awk '{print $1}'`; do
    num=`grep $host $PE_HOSTFILE | awk '{print $2}'`
    for i in `seq 1 $num`; do
    echo $host >> $MACHINEFILE
    done
done

echo -e " MACHINE FILE\n"
echo $MACHINEFILE

# Setup my variables
#
# lsdyna_sp_mpp.e is for LS-DYNA single precision massively parallel.
# lsdyna_dp_mpp.e is for LS-DYNA double precision massively parallel.

SOLVER=lsdyna_dp_mpp.e
INPUT=i.k
MEMORY=50m

#Run your LS-DYNA work below:
mpirun -hostfile $MACHINEFILE $SOLVER i=$INPUT memory=$MEMORY

Sample SMP LS-DYNA Batch Job Script

#!/bin/bash
#$ -cwd
#$ -M a.person@sheffield.ac.uk
#$ -m abe
#$ -l h_rt=00:30:00
#$ -l rmem=2G
#$ -pe smp 4
#$ -N JobName

#Only load ANSYS
module load apps/ansys/22.2/binary

#Set license type and LM server
export LSTC_LICENSE_FILE=network
export LSTC_LICENSE_SERVER=ansyslm.shef.ac.uk
export LSTC_LICENSE=ANSYS

# Add the LS-DYNA executables to the PATH
export PATH=$ANSYSROOT/ansys/bin/linx64/:$PATH

# Add the MPI executables and libs to the PATH / LD_LIBRARY_PATH
# Depending on ANSYS version the MPI paths may require changing.
export PATH=$ANSYSROOT/commonfiles/MPI/Intel/2018.3.222/linx64/bin/:$PATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ANSYSROOT/commonfiles/MPI/Intel/2018.3.222/linx64/lib/:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

# Setup my variables
#
# lsdyna_sp.e is for LS-DYNA single precision.
# lsdyna_dp.e is for LS-DYNA double precision.

SOLVER=lsdyna_dp.e
INPUT=i.k
MEMORY=50m

#Run your LS-DYNA work below:
$SOLVER i=$INPUT memory=$MEMORY ncpu=$NSLOTS

Further details about how to construct batch jobs can be found on the batch submission guide page

The job is submitted to the queue by typing:

qsub my_job_script.sh

ANSYS LS-DYNA training and help resources 

Important

Academic support requests should be directed to the IT Services’ Research and Innovation team or the ANSYS Learning Forum (ensure you register with your University email for priority support).

ANSYS provides numerous academic training and help resources including tutorials, video lectures and examples. A short list of these resources is summarised below:

ANSYS provides free online Innovation Courses which cover numerous topics including the theory and implementation of modelling with ANSYS products.
The ANSYS How to Videos channel has many in depth tutorials for many ANSYS products.

Notes 

Due to the limited number of licenses available if issues are encountered with running jobs please check the logs to see if the program is indicating an insufficient number of available licenses. If this is the case, please resubmit your job until it runs.

For other issues or if you wish to purchase some reserved licenses please contact IT Services.

If desired to perform post modelling analysis etc… the ANSYS Workbench GUI executable can be launched with the runwb2 command.

ANSYS LS-DYNA

Module loading

Interactive jobs

Batch jobs

Batch Submission Scripts