Hi,

At first, you should define your simulation as a dynamic or quasi-static. If you're simulating a quasi-static model, You can decrease your time step or use Mass scaling factor. but in both, you should be sure not to enter a dynamic phase, By checking your speed in the movement to be less than one-tenth of wave speed in your material. or if you are using mass-scale factor, you should check the ratio of kinetic to internal energy (ALLKE/ALLIE).

Hi,

by time scaling, I'll assume you are referring to *DYNAMIC, EXPLICIT, FIXED TIME INCREMENTATION, SCALE FACTOR=f. If this is the case, this option is intended to ensure stability by reducing the time increment (i.e., slowing down your simulation), it is used for cases where you feel Abaqus is being too "optimistic" with it's stable time increment estimation.

Mass scaling on the other hand, can be used to speed up your simulation; by scaling the density to reduce the wave speed within element(s). You can check your mesh; are there some small elements which are dropping your stable time increment? if you cannot avoid these via remeshing, then you can use mass-scaling.

As mentioned above, with all mass-scaling you need to keep an eye on your kinetic energies; as too much mass scaling will effect the physics of your problem.

In explicit integration, the time incrementation depends on the size mesh, material density, and young modulus. In order to reduce the computational cost, you have two options: increment the mesh size or apply the mass scaling. However, in dynamic problems, the mass scaling will alternate the results. The mass scaling is used to simulate static problems with explicit integration.