Abaqus

It is important that analysts consider nonlinear responses as an essential part of a simulation. Lightweight structures buckle, in accident scenarios, they could collapse. Many important materials like rubbers and plastics are too soft to simulate based on linearized deformation. Often the design engineer wants to take full advantage of the ductility and toughness materials provide, requiring models that account for plasticity, damage, and failure.

Many design problems involve contact, from Hertz contact in a bearing simulation, small-sliding contact in bolt-down problems, deformable bodies under contact in metal stamping processes, or various components of a vehicle plastically deforming and interacting by contact during crash simulations. Even traditionally linear problems like frequency analysis and steady-state dynamics often depend on nonlinear preloading conditions that dictate the linear response. Abaqus allows you to address all of these problems and many more with unparalleled accuracy and performance. Built from the ground up as a nonlinear finite element solver, it has long held a worldwide reputation as the tool of choice for simulations where nonlinearity dominates the response.

Abaqus is popular as an advanced analysis code with its specialization on production analysis. It has a comprehensive suite of capabilities that are straightforward and easy to learn. It is modular and has simple, consistent and intuitive problem definition rules that relieve you of artificial and frustrating limitations. You can model geometry as closely as needed, define various material behaviors associated with different components in the model, and simulate complex scenarios representing an enormous diversity of realistic physics.

Abaqus is designed to ease complex tasks. One of the best examples is automatic time stepping in nonlinear problems: Abaqus chooses and continuously adjusts the time increments to automatically obtain a good balance of performance and nonlinear convergence. This feature alone has permitted many users to perform simulations that would have been impossible otherwise. You can tackle realistic simulations with confidence of success and with the assurance of meeting the design schedules.

Research organizations and highly specialized experts use Abaqus extensively because of its versatility and user-definable extensibility. Its great success is built on its acceptance in the design analysis community as a general analysis tool that not only provides convenience for routine and advanced simulations alike, but also infinitely extends the range of possible simulations through a wide range of customizable user subroutine interfaces.

What distinguishes Abaqus is its proven record of success in the largest and most complex problems. For relatively straightforward applications, Abaqus is a pleasure to work with. For the most complex problems, Abaqus shines as the one tool that provides reliable answers.