Advantages of the explicit time integration method

The explicit method is especially well-suited to solving high-speed dynamic events that require many small increments to obtain a high-resolution solution. If the duration of the event is short, the solution can be obtained efficiently.

Contact conditions and other extremely discontinuous events are readily formulated in the explicit method and can be enforced on a node-by-node basis without iteration. The nodal accelerations can be adjusted to balance the external and internal forces during contact.

The most striking feature of the explicit method is the absence of a global tangent stiffness matrix, which is required with implicit methods. Since the state of the model is advanced explicitly, iterations and tolerances are not required.