peteroznewman
Bbp_participant

If you followed my advice and typed a number for the Newton Raphson Residuals, there are plots to look at under the Solution Information folder. They show were the solver is struggling to find a force equilibrium. Usually, making the elements smaller in the neighborhood of the peak values of the Newton Raphson Residual will help the solver to converge.

The structure has a thin wall compared with the overall size. You can reduce solution time if you replace the solid model of the structure with a midsurface model.  Check the Solution Output to see if the solver is running incore or out-of-core memory. If it is the latter, then installing more RAM in your computer will reduce solution time.