Question:
Why does the Peak Acceleration value on the Damage Data report from my EDSMAC4 event not match the values shown in the time based Variable Output report?
Answer:
When you ran the EDSMAC4 event, did you notice a message at the end of the run that said "Warning: The output interval is rather large for a collision simulation. Important collision pulse data may be missing."? This message is designed to help you remember to reduce the Output Time Interval for collision simulations from the default value of 0.1 sec to a value of 0.02 sec or smaller (ideally 0.001 sec) if you want to correctly view time-domain reports in Playback such as Variable Output and DamageStudio.
Alpha-numeric output reports, such as the Damage Data report, are created when the event is executed, and are based directly on the current integration timestep. Time-domain reports, such as Variable Output, are based on the current Output Time Interval setting, which is normally larger than the integration timestep. Thus, the peak acceleration (and other dynamic variables) may be “filtered out” by the (coarser) Output Time Interval.