Reply To: Don’t know how to evaluate residual stress

[peteroznewman]

Add a Plasticity model such as Bilinear Isotropic Hardening to your material, or use the Steel NL from the library. The default Structural Steel material does not have plasticity defined, so you will not see any permanent deformation after bending that material past the yield point.

Use a two step solution sequence. Step 1 apply a force large enough to exceed the yield stress. Step 2 set the force to zero.  At the end of Step 2, the beam will show some permanent deformation after it springs back from the deformation at the end of Step 1. The beam will also have residual stress.

Under Analysis Settings, you must turn on Large Deflection.  You may also need to set both Step 1 and 2 to have Auto Time Stepping turned on and set the Initial and Minimum Substeps to 10 and Maximum Substeps to 100 to help the solution converge.