FE Post-Processing, ABAQUS

(Provided by Katherine Acton)

Users: Professor Schafer, Professor Schafers students, Libin, Arghavan, Katherine Types of output data in ABAQUS: Field output History output Data file output Results file output Post-Processing in ABAQUS, in order of increasing complexity: 1. Most Basic, within the GUI: The most basic approach to post-processing can all be done within the CAE GUI. This includes using the pull down menus to manipulate field and history output data. This includes plotting contours, rotating the object, creating an XY plot using selected data, animating the results, and even doing selected basic calculations involving the output data. It is common for people to want to output selected data in numerical form, in order to import it into MATLAB codes. The most simple way to do this is within the GUI, using the pull down menu Report->XY data or Report-> Field Output to write to a report file (*.rpt). To automate this function, however, is more complicated. 2. To the .dat file: Another way to output numerical data can be done directly from the input file by including one of the output requests: *EL PRINT, *NODE PRINT or *ENERGY PRINT. The .dat file created is a (long and wordy) file which is fairly understandable. In order to read this file into MATLAB, the user must write a program which reads only the data lines. Both Cris and Arghavan have written MATLAB files to retrieve data from the .dat file. 3. Python Scripting: Using scripts written in python, you can access the .odb file and retrieve either history or field output data, which you can then print to a .txt file and read into matlab. (the command for doing this at the command line without entering the GUI is: abaqus cae noGUI=scriptname.py). You can also automate any task you could perform in the GUI by running a script to do it instead. A good place to start with this is the .rpy files which abaqus creates automatically anytime you do anything in the GUI. These files contain the python commands to do whatever you just did. A good resource on python is a book by Lutz, Programming Python, 1996, which is available online through the JHU library. 4. To the .fil file: Similar to the .dat file in that you use the commands in the input file: *EL FILE, NODE FILE or *ENERGY FILE to write selected results to the .fil file. The similarity ends there, however, because the .fil file is in binary or ASCII format, depending on what you specify. The advantage of this is that for large memory output, the format is more condensed. It is difficult to access; Libin has figured out how to import the ASCII data from this file into MATLAB. The other way to access it is as a binary file. ABAQUS has set up subroutines that can be called in a fortran file to access ABAQUS data. It would seem theoretically like a straightforward option to post-process in fortran, since the data can be called directly. However, the problem is that linking the fortran compiler with ABAQUS is not at all a straightforward process. Random useful website: http://abaqus.custhelp.com You can create an account and login to get support on a number of issues. Although the academic license doesnt allow you to ask them questions, you can still search through and view the answers to questions that other people have asked.