Abaqus


Abaqus FEA is a software suite for finite element analysis and computer-aided engineering, originally released in 1978. The name and logo of this software are based on the abacus calculation tool.
The Abaqus product suite consists of five core software products:
  1. Abaqus/CAE, or "Complete Abaqus Environment". It is a software application used for both the modeling and analysis of mechanical components and assemblies and visualizing the finite element analysis result. A subset of Abaqus/CAE including only the post-processing module can be launched independently in the Abaqus/Viewer product.
  2. Abaqus/Standard, a general-purpose Finite-Element analyzer that employs implicit integration scheme.
  3. Abaqus/Explicit, a special-purpose Finite-Element analyzer that employs explicit integration scheme to solve highly nonlinear systems with many complex contacts under transient loads.
  4. Abaqus/CFD, a Computational Fluid Dynamics software application which provides advanced computational fluid dynamics capabilities with extensive support for preprocessing and postprocessing provided in Abaqus/CAE.
  5. Abaqus/Electromagnetic, a Computational electromagnetics software application which solves advanced computational electromagnetic problems.
The Abaqus products use the open-source scripting language Python for scripting and customization. Abaqus/CAE uses the fox-toolkit for GUI development.

History

Abaqus company was founded in 1978 by Dr. David Hibbitt, Dr. Bengt Karlsson, and Dr. Paul Sorensen with the original name Hibbitt, Karlsson & Sorensen, Inc.,. Later on, the company name was changed to ABAQUS Inc. before the acquisition by Dassault Systèmes in 2005. After that, it became part of Dassault Systèmes Simulia Corp. The headquarters of the company was located in Providence, Rhode Island until 2014. Since 2014, the headquarters of the company are located in Johnston, Rhode Island, United States.

Release history

In recent years, a new version of Abaqus is released near the end of every year.

Applications

Abaqus is used in the automotive, aerospace, and industrial products industries. The product is popular with non-academic and research institutions in engineering due to the wide material modeling capability, and the program's ability to be customized, for example, users can define their own material models so that new materials could also be simulated in Abaqus. Abaqus also provides a good collection of multiphysics capabilities, such as coupled acoustic-structural, piezoelectric, and structural-pore capabilities, making it attractive for production-level simulations where multiple fields need to be coupled.
Abaqus was initially designed to address non-linear physical behavior; as a result, the package has an extensive range of material models such as elastomeric and hyperelastic material capabilities.
Here are some animated examples

Solution Sequence

Every complete finite-element analysis consists of 3 separate stages:
Abaqus/CAE is capable of pre-processing, post-processing, and monitoring the processing stage of the solver; however, the first stage can also be done by other compatible CAD software, or even a text editor. Abaqus/Standard, Abaqus/Explicit or Abaqus/CFD are capable of accomplishing the processing stage. Dassault Systemes also produces Abaqus for CATIA for adding advanced processing and post processing stages to a pre-processor like CATIA.

Solvers Comparison

The following is a comparison between the solver capabilities of Abaqus/Standard and Abaqus/Explicit.
FeatureCommonABAQUS/ABAQUS/Explicit only
Element libraryComprehensiveno limitsonly elements appropriate for explicit solutions
Material modelsComprehensiveonly yield modelsyield and fracture models
Solution methodsImplicit Integration
needs solve multiple coupled equation
Using the K Matrix
Stable		explicit integration
step by step
using small time steps
sometimes not stable
Required Disk Spacerepetitive calculations likely
takes a lot of space		no repetitive calculation
normal
Types of ProblemsLinear:
non-linear:
Contact:
usual systems
Can solve
Can solve
Can solve if simple
Optimal under steady loads
Can solve
Optimal. even if highly non-linear
Optimal. even for complex and varying conditions
Optimal under transient loads like Impact, Pulse and Explosion

;Notes:
The more complex the contacts become, the more repetitive calculations ABAQUS/Standard has to solve, and the more time and disk space needed; ABAQUS Explicit is the optimal choice in this case
Like static elements dynamic elements, thermal elements and electrical elements
Steady, Static and Constant loads are the same. Transient loads include: quasi-static loads and dynamic loads.