July’s webinar will present the analysis types available in Abaqus, for evaluating the structural response under buckling, post buckling and collapse.

Buckling is the sudden collapse of a structural member under axial compressive loading. The importance of accurately predicting buckling loads during design is paramount, since these loads are on most occasions lower than the ultimate compressive loads of the particular member. The non-linear character of this failure type, imposes a modelling and convergence challenge.

This weeks blog is about hydrofoiling. One of my personal hobbies is watersports. I love sailing, windsurfing, wakeboarding and other challenging water related balance-sports. Normally I spend my summer in a warm country along the sea, or at least close to it. Due to Covid-19 we will stay in our own country this year, but there is still plenty sea along the shore of Holland. During the lockdown period, I watched some videos during the evening-hours on youtube where hydrofoiling is done for windsurfing & kitesurfing. Although I have never done it myself yet, it seemed a very cool thing to start trying out this summer. Being a Simulation addict, I first wanted to get an impression how dificult this is by virtually assessing the concept of it by use of SIMULIA XFlow CFD.

The “Introduction to Non-Linear Analysis Workshop” on the 26th of June is a free event for anyone who has some experience of simulation and FEA, but would like to look at extending the scope of the work they do. This workshop is an ideal way to understand what advanced simulation and SIMULIA Abaqus can offer, and find out how easy it actually is to perform a real world non-linear analysis.

When producing a part, you want it to match the design, the geometry. How to achieve this is not always evident.

For example, when the part is created from sheet metal by pressing it between an upper and lower die, the final part may not fully match the space in between the dies due to the spring back effect. If the deformation would be fully plastic, then the deformed shape will not change during unloading. If it is partially elastic, then the elastic deformation is recovered upon unloading and hence the final shape differs from the shape between the dies. In this blog I’ll give an example of this effect, showing that we can model it with Abaqus.

Two new methods are available in Abaqus to couple analyses performed at different scales: mean field homogenisation (MFH) and FE-based Representative Volume Element (RVE). The objective is to predict the mechanical response of a structure using data from a smaller scale. These methods are particularly useful when studying complex materials or structures such as composite materials or lattice structures.

In this webinar, we will present the two methods:
- MFH, that uses an analytical calculation to describe the relationship between the scales and
- FE-RVE, that uses a FE model of the microstructure.

We will also look at the micromechanics plug-in that facilitates the generation of FE-RVE models and calculates the homogenised properties of a material that can then be used at the macro scale.

Sometimes you may wish to simulate a process where various parts interact with one another. In such cases it is often impossible to rely on predefined loads and boundary conditions, since the exact points of contact are dependent on the solution. Including contact in your simulation can be a more realistic way to represent loadings.

Abaqus provides a wide range of mechanical models and numerical methods for contact. We will begin this month’s webinar with an overview of these capabilities, considering how to select the best options for a given problem. We will then move on to some challenging example problems and investigate how advanced features of Abaqus contact can help convergence and ensure you obtain realistic solutions.

In this blog post, we will be showcasing a fully coupled fluid structure interaction (FSI) analysis, of a peristaltic roller pump. This study will focus on assessing the performance of a peristaltic pump, under operation. This co-simulation analysis, will solve for both the structural and fluid domains' unknown quantities, during 1 revolution of the rotating mechanism of the pump.

This is an example of a challenging application, in which numerical modelling and computer simulations can provide a lot of insight and value.

The aspects we want to evaluate in this digital model are; determining the volume flow-rate for a given rotation speed, assessing contact stress areas on the tube, and determining the torque output for the given rpm.

The “Introduction to Non-Linear Analysis Workshop” on the 29th of May is a free event for anyone who has some experience of simulation and FEA, but would like to look at extending the scope of the work they do. This workshop is an ideal way to understand what advanced simulation and SIMULIA Abaqus can offer, and find out how easy it actually is to perform a real world non-linear analysis.

Today I have came across a very inspiring video.

It contains a lecture of Dr. David Hibbitt, founder of the Abaqus software, held on 24th of may 2019 at MIT, department Civil and Environmental Engineering. The lecture was called; "ABAQUS and its market:  evolution of an engineering simulation software venture."

If you have an hour left during the day / evening, sit back, relax and watch this inspiring lecture, where Dr. David Hibbitt goes through the actual start-up phase of the Abaqus company until today.

To model the behaviour of rubbers and rubber-like materials, typically hyperelastic material models are used. A hyperelastic material is elastic: after unloading, the material returns to its original shape. The material state therefore does not depend on the history or the rate of deformation, but only on the current loading. The model is based on a strain energy potential, which is a function of the (invariants of the) current strain.