Reply To: Displacement field measurement in the local coordinate system of a moving object

[Chris Quan]

If a local coordinate system is fixed in space, it is possible to plot displacements in a local coordinate system directly in Explicit Dynamics system.

If a local coordinate system is not fixed in space and moving along with a material, it is not possible to plot displacement field in that local coordinate system in Explicit Dynamics system. 

The workaround is to insert a results tracker of Mass-Averaged Velocity and scope it to the material you are interested before running your model. Once the simulation is done, program will show the time history of the averaged velocity of the material. You can treat it as rigid body velocity of the material. Then export the velocity and the displacements you are interested to Excel.

In Excel, you need to integrate the velocity with time to get the rigid-bdy displacement and then subtract this displacement from the exported displacements. The difference is the displacment you are looking for.