Lately, I’ve received a few questions related to python scripting. It is a nice way to add to the default Abaqus functionality and automate repetitive work. Here I want to give a few tips that may help when you are creating your first Abaqus python scripts.

In short:

• Mesh-independent fasteners couple layers of material to each other, simulating the effect of e.g. spot welds.
• They don’t require the coupled region to be separated from other regions by a partition (mesh-independence), making them easy to define.
• Instead their position is defined by attachment points, reference points or nodes.
• It is possible to create patterns of attachments points, to easily define the location of multiple fasteners.
• Fastener are defined from the interaction module, via “special”, “fasteners”, “create” or the “create fasteners” icon.
• Rigid MPC fasteners are possible. The behavior of the fastener can also be defined via a connector section to allow more complex behavior.

In short

• Abaqus allows you to continue a previous analysis with a new analysis.
• Restarting is only possible from increments for which restart files are available for the previous analysis.
• These are requested before the previous analysis is run, from the step module, via “output” “restart requests”.
• In the model attributes of the new analysis you can refer to the step of the previous job that should be used as starting point.
• It is possible to continue an interrupted job as it was originally defined, or to add additional steps.
• Because additional steps are a continuation of what was done before, it is not possible to include new geometry etc.
• Select ‘restart’ as job type when running the restart analysis
• The .odb of the restart analysis will only contain data of the newly simulated steps, so the output is split over two odb's.

There are different options to adapt the mesh in Abaqus: ALE adaptive meshing, adaptive remeshing and mesh-to-mesh solution mapping. It can be difficult to keep them apart, so in this blog, I’ll give an overview of what they are and what their purpose is. I’ll start with a summary table and then go into more details.

Many material that are used nowadays are composites: they consist of more than one material. To simulate a composite, different approaches can be taken at different length scales.

On the micro scale, a detailed model of all materials with their geometries and interaction can be made. This provides insight into the behavior of the combined material, but it can be difficult to determine boundary conditions that match realistic situations.

Geometry is often drawn in 3D, also when it is axisymmetric. The analysis will be much faster when making use of the axisymmetry. In such cases, we need to get an axisymmetric cross-section out of a 3D model. In this blog I will show a way to do this with Abaqus. The main idea is to create a sketch on a cross-section of the part and project the relevant edges to this sketch. This sketch is saved and used to create a new axisymmetric part. This isn't the only way of doing it, but at least it gives an idea.

Some time ago we posted a blog on How to submit and monitor Abaqus jobs through command window. I would now like to revisit this subject, go into a few additional commands and options, including different Abaqus versions and the findkeyword and fetch utilities, and look in a bit more detail to the abaqus commands

In this blog, I want to discuss units in Abaqus. On one hand, I can be short on it: we can choose what we like, as long as it is consistent. On the other hand, this is a common source of mistakes. Therefore I want to go into a bit more detail.

Tosca is used for non-parametric optimization. It has several different flavors; it can be used to determine:

Isight is probably best known for its capabilities to do optimization. However, this is not the only thing Isight can do. Isight also includes the option to create an approximation, for example. With this, a mathematical equation is fitted to the actual behaviour of one or more components. This approximation can then be used in other Isight models, so it is not necessary to run the actual component(s) each time. This can save a lot of time. In this blog, I’ll show how to make an approximation in Isight and what results data is available.