Will a static model yield an accurate solution when the failure mechanism is frictional slip? If so wouldn’t the implicit stepping need to be small? It seems counterintuitive that a large stepping implicit solver could be used to capture the solution of a path dependent problem like this. A brief problem description may help, an idealized analogy is described below.
Imagine a cubic geometry sliced into 4 or so layers, stacking vertically. There are then 4 or so fasteners used to clamp all the layers tight. Normal and tangent loads are placed on the top layer while the bottom-most face is fixed. We’re interested in the slip between subsequent layers, which will eventually translate load to the fasteners and fail the structure. Theory dictates a very simple hand-calc solution to this idealized example but unfortunately we need FEM to capture details in subsequent steps. Can this mechanism be captured using an implicit method?