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.

In this blog post, we will be showcasing some of the plug-ins, available for Abaqus.

A plug-in essentially is a small piece of software installed into another application (Abaqus in this case) in order to extend the application’s capabilities.

 Typically, plug-ins are categorized either as kernel plug-ins or as GUI plug-ins. The first ones consist of functions written using the Abaqus Scripting Interface. GUI plug-ins contain commands that create Graphical User Interfaces.

Offshore and subsea structures have been constructed and commissioned for many decades now, resulting in quite innovative and mature technologies.

These structure types are subjected to loads of different nature. Therefore there is the need for developing methods, that allow for a structural assessment under serviceability loads, in a quick but also accurate way.

Particularly, for subsea structures focused on oil extraction from reservoirs, lying under the seabed, interaction with the surrounding soil becomes of critical importance.

In this blog post, we will be investigating a drilling wellhead under external load action while also incorporating the behavior of the surrounding fully saturated soil from the seabed, in terms of nonlinear springs.

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.

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.

In this month’s webinar we will be covering residual stress and springback. We will look at their definition and implications on FEA, how to deal with springback efficiently in Abaqus and the transfer of residual stresses and deformed parts between Abaqus steps and solvers.

Often the forming of metallic parts involves large quasi-static deformations and multiple sources of non-linearity. Processes such as these are regularly analysed using Abaqus/Explicit. This has implications when the aim is to model the forming process and determine the final deformed shape of a component.

This blog post, constitutes a continuation of the previous blog post,regarding modeling of steel fibre reinforced-concrete composites with Abaqus. In the current blog post, we will be showing an exemplary steel fibre composite pull out test, in a 3 dimensional model, wherein,also damage of the concrete matrix, is included.This is realised by using the Concrete Damage Plasticity model, available in Abaqus. 

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.

The next in the webinar series will cover sequential and fully coupled thermal-stress analyses using Abaqus. 

The three modes of heat transfer, conduction, convection and radiation will be covered, along with how these are defined in CAE.

Frequently a thermal analysis is coupled to a stress analysis in order to determine the impact of thermal loading on the structural behaviour.  If the structural behaviour will not influence the thermal behaviour, a sequential analysis approach can be adopted, but if the thermal behaviour is coupled to the structural behaviour, a fully coupled thermal/stress analysis is required.  This webinar will cover how both forms of analyses are performed.