COMPUTATIONAL MECHANICS

ISCM2007, July 30-August 1, 2007, Beijing, China

2007 Tsinghua University Press & Springer

FE Realization of Thermo-Visco-Plastic Constitutive Models using

VUMAT in ABAQUS/Explicit Program
C. Y. Gao*
Department of Mechanics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027 China
Email: lxgao@zju.edu.cn
Abstract ABAQUS software has provided many kinds of element types and material models in its libraries
for users. But with the rapid development of industrial technology the material models in the current material
library of ABAQUS cannot well describe some practical problems such as ultra-high-speed cutting.
However, ABAQUS provides the ability of allowing users to introduce their self-defined materials into the
main program by user subroutine (UMAT or VUMAT) so as to get more accurate simulation results for their
specific problems. In this paper, the method of how to realize a user-defined generalized material model in
ABAQUS/Explicit program by the explicit user materials subroutine VUMAT is presented in details.
Compared with UMAT in ABAQUS/Standard, VUMAT adopts explicit integration algorithm (e.g.
Forward/Backward Euler methods) for stress updating. It doesnt need iterations and Jacobian and so makes
the computational efficiency enhanced greatly.
Key words: FE simulation, ABAQUS, VUMAT, constitutive model
INTRODUCTION
Although there are many element types and material models in the libraries of ABAQUS software. But some
practical problems such as ultra-high-speed cutting cannot be well described by using the material models
included in the current material library of ABAQUS. Fortunately, ABAQUS has provided the
program-redevelopment ability for users by allowing users to introduce their self-defined materials into the
main program by user subroutine (UMAT or VUMAT) so as to get more accurate simulation results for their
specific problems. In this paper, the method of how to realize a user-defined generalized material model in
ABAQUS/Explicit program by the explicit user materials subroutine VUMAT is presented in details.
The examples of user subroutine for isotropic and kinematic hardening models have been given in ABAQUS
manual. But for more complicated constitutive models which take the rate hardening effect and the thermal
softening effect into account together with the strain hardening effect, the required user subroutines are still
not fully investigated and remains difficult for most users.
Among those complicated constitutive models, the most popularly-used one is Johnson-Cook model.
Johnson and Cook (1985) proposed a uniaxial constitutive relationship describing the von Mises yield stress
as follows:

y =A + B n(1 + C ln & )(1 T * )

m

(1)

where A, B, C, n and m are material constants; T * =T Troom/(Tmelt Troom ) , and T is the absolute
temperature, is the equivalent plastic strain, & is the plastic strain rate. The material constants are
determined from tension or torsion straining tests. The model has successfully described Taylor Cylinder
Impact Test for a variety of materials by coded in some FE programs (for example, the Lagrangian material
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dynamic code EPIC-2 and ABAQUS). But for the case of very high strain rates (such as ultra-high-speed
cutting), it cannot provide satisfactory flow stress results when compared with experimental data. The
intrinsic reason may be that this type of constitutive relationship is established purely on the empirical
summary to a lot of experimental results and thus lack of microscopic physical basis.
There is also another type of constitutive models established on the physical mechanism of plastic
deformation of crystal materials. Zerilli and Armstrong (1987) developed a constitutive model that accounts
for strain, strain rate and temperature dependence in a coupled manner by dislocation mechanics. It is
derived based on the concept of thermal activation analysis for overcoming local obstacles of dislocation
motions. And they proposed two different forms for the two different classes of metals: body-centered-cubic
(b.c.c.) and face-centered-cubic (f.c.c.) because of their different crystal structure and dislocation
characteristics. For the f.c.c. metals, the constitutive relation is

y = c1 + c 2 exp[(c3 c 4 ln & )T ]

(2)

The material constants are directly related with specific physical characteristic parameters, that is to say,
they can be physically interpreted. In practice, they are usually determined by numerical fitting of
experimental data of macroscopic plastic deformation of materials for convenience.
This model has been used widely in material dynamic computational code. Recently we have made some
important improvements on this model in virtue of the high-strain-rate experimental data of OFHC Cu. To
verify our new relation, we need to realize it in a FE program. So, we will try to realize a new
thermo-visco-plastic constitutive model in ABAQUS/Explicit program by using VUMAT subroutine in this
paper. The general form of this type of material models can be written as

y = f ( , &, T )

(3)

In fact, one can introduce any constitutive relation of this type into the ABAQUS/Explicit program in light of
the numerical techniques presented below.
ALGORITHM OF VUMAT
1. Elasto-plastic formulation of VUMAT If we adopt isotropic hardening law for strain hardening, the
basic governing equations of the general constitutive model are almost the same as those of isotropic
hardening plasticity model except that their yield stresses have different expressions. For the elastic part, the
generalized Hookes law is obeyed and the stress should be expressed in Green-Naghdi rate form in a
corotational framework, i.e.

& ij = ij &kke + 2&ije

(4)

The integration form is

ij = ij kke + 2 ije

(5)

For the plastic part, Mises yield criterion and plastic flow law are still usable [1]. The yield function is
3
S ij S ij y ( , &, T ) = 0
2

(6)

where S ij = ij ij kk / 3 . The plastic flow law is

&ijp =

3 S ij & p

2y

where & p =

(7)
2 p p
&ij &ij , and
3

t
( = & p dt ) is defined as equivalent plastic strain.
0

2. Difference between VUMAT and UMAT Compared with the implicit algorithm [2] used by UMAT in
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ABAQUS/Standard, VUMAT in ABAQUS/Explicit adopts the explicit time integration algorithm (like
Forward/Backward Euler methods) [3]. The new stress updating method doesnt need large numbers of
iterations as well as the Jacobian of elastic-plastic tensor, so the computational efficiency is enhanced greatly
in ABAQUS/Explicit program. But it requires to define a stable limit determined by minimum characteristic
element length and elastic wave speed of the material (i.e. t max = Le / C d ). Besides, the time increment
cannot be redefined in the program.
The VUMAT subroutine has a vectorized form because its interface passes the state data for blocks of
material points to the subroutine on each call. It uses a two-state architecture---- the initial values are in the
old arrays, the new values must be put in the new arrays. Solid elements for plasticity are formulated in terms
of the Jaumann rate of stress in UMAT but in terms of the Green-Naghdi rate of stress in a corotational
framework when used with a VUMAT.
3. Integration procedure of VUMAT The integration procedure is based on the explicit time integration
algorithm. First, the elastic predicting stress is generated using von Mises stress of purely elastic behavior

pr

3 pr pr
S ij S ij
2

(8a)

S ijpr = S ijold + 2 ijp + ij kkp

(8b)

START of Subroutine VUMAT

Subroutine Interface
(state data transfer)

NO

If inelastic
deformation ?
YES
Calculate the yield stress
with user constitutive relation:

Calculate new elastic stress

Call Subroutine VUyield ( )

y = f ( , & , T )

Calculate the elastic

predicting stress

YES

If yield ?
(Mises yield
Criterion)

Calculate the increment of

equivalent plastic strain

NO
Update the stress
Update the stress
(new stress = predicting stress)
Update state variables, specific
internal energy, inelastic energy
END of Subroutine VUMAT
(Return to main program)

Figure 1: The flowchart of VUMAT subroutine

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The predicting stress is obtained based on a stress-compensation method [4]. If the elastic predictor pr is
larger than the current yield stress y , plastic flow occurs. Then we calculate the equivalent plastic strain
increment. To avoid local iteration, it is approximately calculated explicitly as the following equation [5]

= (

pr

y ) /(3 + h)

(9)

here h = d y / d p stands for the hardening at the beginning of the increment. This approximation will be
reasonable given that the size of the time increment used in an ABAQUS/Explicit analysis is generally very
small.
Finally, the integration procedure of the VUMAT subroutine is illustrated by the below flowchart:
INTERPRETATION OF VUMAT CODING
The Fortran code of VUMAT subroutine can be programmed in terms of the integration procedures above.
Some key tips for the coding of VUMAT are discussed below.
1) Since we adopt isotropic hardening in our general constitutive model, the main program of ABAQUS
Input file is almost the same as that of isotropic hardening plasticity model if for the identical example. There
are only several sentences needed to be modified. The related sentences in the main program of the isotropic
hardening plasticity model are listed below on the left; and the corresponding modified sentences in the main
program of the user-defined model are shown below on the right:
*SOLID SECTION, ELSET=_elset1, MATERIAL=Cu

*SOLID SECTION, ELSET=_elset1, MATERIAL=vumat

*MATERIAL, NAME=Cu

*MATERIAL, NAME= vumat

*DENSITY

*USER MATERIAL, CONSTANTS = n

E , ,

*ELASTIC

*DEPVAR

E,
*PLASTIC, HARDENING=KINEMATIC
//table of data describing the plastic hardening curve

m,
*DENSITY

Here n means the number of user-defined material properties which corresponds to the variable nprops
defined in the interface of VUMAT, and m means the number of user-defined state variables associated with
the material type which corresponds to the variable nstatev defined in the interface of VUMAT. They are two
important parameters in the program.
2) User subroutine VUMAT is called for blocks of material points at each increment. When the subroutine is
called, it is automatically provided with the data of state (including stress and solution-dependent state
variables) by the main program at the start of the increment.
The first part of VUMAT is called interface which is in standard format and cannot be modified. Its
function is to define all variables used and transfer the variable data between the main program and the
VUMAT subroutine. The data are passed in and out by a group of arrays. The main dimension of these arrays
is equal to nblock, which is the number of material points to be processed in this call to VUMAT. Each entry
in an array corresponds to a single material point. All material points in the same block have the same
material name and belong to the same element type. Complete descriptions of all these variable parameters
are provided in Chapter 25 of ABAQUS Analysis User's Manual [6].
For the general constitutive model, there are three solution-dependent state variables (plastic strain, strain
rate and temperature), which need to be defined by users and updated in each increment. We can specially
declare them as three self-defined state variables like:
STATE(*,1) = equivalent plastic strain
STATE(*,2) = plastic strain rate
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STATE(*,3) = temperature
3) In the VUMAT subroutine, it will call another subroutine VUyield to get the value of dynamic yield stress.
The subroutine VUyield is to recover the hardening curve of yield stress versus plastic strain, which can be
given by a data table or an analytic description. If the hardening curve is given by a explicit analytic
expression, that is to say, we can analytically determine the general constitutive relationship, the value of
yield stress can then be gotten directly from the analytic relation.
Otherwise, if it is difficult to determine the analytic expression of the general constitutive relationship, but
the stress-strain curves at given strain rates and temperatures can be obtained by dynamic material test, we
can input the data pairs of flow stress versus plastic strain into VUMAT by the command sentence *USER
MATERIAL, CONSTANT = nprops, and then pass them to the subroutine VUyield by the array
props(nprops). The command sentence of calling subroutine VUyield should be
Call VUyield (yieldOld, hard, state(*,1), state(*,2), state(*,3), props(nprops), nvalue)
where hard is hardening variable (i.e. h as shown before) including strain hardening, strain rate hardening
and thermal softening all together. nvalue (=nprops/2-1) is the number of data pairs (a pair of data
corresponds to a sample point on the hardening curve).
4) In the interface of the user subroutine, the temperature is passed into subroutine as read-only variable and
cannot be modified (even in a fully coupled thermal-stress analysis). If there is no appearance of adiabatic
shear phenomenon, the deformation process can be treated as isothermal one, in which the temperature is
specified in the *INITIAL CONDITIONS option and keeps constant throughout the whole analysis.
If there appears adiabatic material behavior (conversion of plastic work to dissipation heat), the temperatures
must be stored as a user-defined state variable and updated in each increment. The theoretical evaluation of
temperature increment within a time interval is [7]:
T =

cp

t + t p

d p

(10)

here c p is the specific heat coefficient, and is the converting efficiency from plastic work to heat energy.
The integral on the right of the equation is just the increment of plastic work, which is related with the
updating of inelastic specific energy in the subroutine.
The thermal properties can be defined using the following options: *Conductivity, *Specific Heat,
*expansion, *Inelastic heat fraction. Note that their units must use a uniform unit system predefined by users
for the program.
SUMMARY
The following comments should be helpful in the application of the VUMAT subroutine:
1). The user subroutine is suitable for large-strain calculations because the necessary rotations of stress and
strain has been taken care of by ABAQUS program.
2). The user subroutine can be used with all elements that have displacement degrees of freedom. For plane
stress elements the stress components to be defined are 11 , 22 , 12 ; for plane strain and axisymmetric
elements they are 11 , 22 , 33 , 12 ; for three-dimensional elements they are 11 , 22 , 33 , 12 , 23 ,
13 .

3). Before the usage of the user subroutine, the single element testing under high-strain-rate loading (e.g.
high speed impact) must be carried firstly to validate the coding [8]. Because Johnson-Cook model has
already been included in the material library of ABAQUS, it is selected to be realized by the code of user
subroutine so that the numerical results can be verified by those of ABAQUS itself. It has been indicated by
examples that the program with VUMAT subroutine for J-C model yields very similar numerical results to
those of the program with option *PLASTIC, hardening=Johnson Cook.
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Acknowledgements
The technical support of Shanghai Agency, ABAQUS CHINA Inc. is gratefully acknowledged.
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