What's New in Abaqus 2018
Product simulation is often performed today by engineering groups using niche simulation tools from different vendors to simulate various design attributes. The use of multiple vendor software products creates inefficiencies and increases costs. SIMULIA delivers a scalable suite of unified analysis products that allow all users, regardless of their simulation expertise or domain focus, to collaborate and seamlessly share simulation data and approved methods without loss of information fidelity.
The Abaqus Unified FEA product suite offers powerful and complete solutions for both routine and sophisticated engineering problems covering a vast spectrum of industrial applications. For example, in the automotive industry engineering work groups can consider full vehicle loads, dynamic vibration, multibody systems, impact/crash, nonlinear static, thermal coupling, and acoustic-structural coupling using a common model data structure and integrated solver technology. Best-in-class companies are taking advantage of Abaqus Unified FEA to consolidate their processes and tools, reduce costs and inefficiencies, and gain a competitive advantage.
Benefits
- Improved correlation between tests and analysis results
- Greater efficiency in model generation
- Improved data transfer between simulations
- Reduction in a company’s FEA toolset and training expenses
- More flexible workforce
Features
Abaqus Unified FEA is the world’s technology-leading suite of software for structural finite element modeling, solving, and visualization.
- Linear and nonlinear analysis
- Material models for metals, composites, human tissue, rubber, thermoplastics, and more
- Material fracture and failure
- Robust contact capabilities
- High-performance computing
Abaqus 2018 - Unified FEA Products
- Abaqus/CAE
- Abaqus/Standard
- Abaqus/Explicit
Material and element enhancements
- The multiscale material modeling capability has been enhanced to support:
- Heat transfer, coupled temperature-displacement, and linear perturbation procedures.
- History output of micro-level results
- Fiber orientations now update with large rotations
- Improved accuracy and performance
- New user subroutines have been introduced for modeling thermal materials and internal heat generation in Abaqus/Explicit
- The linear pyramid element C3D5 and linear hybrid tetrahedron C3D4H are now available in Abaqus/Explicit
- The three-dimensional gasket element library in Abaqus/Standard now includes temperature degrees-of-freedom
Contact enhancements
- Available in FP.1806: General contact in Abaqus/Explicit now supports 2D and axisymmetric analysis
- General contact in Abaqus/Standard now supports analytical rigid surfaces
- Initial contact stresses in Abaqus/Standard can be computed based on user-specfied stress in elements underlying the contact surface
- New contact output variables including scalar integration of contact pressure over the surface
- Feature edges in Abaqus/Explicit general contact update based on the current configuration facilitating efficient and accurate simulations
- Friction coefficients can now be specified based on the underlying surface properties and a combinatorial rule
Linear Dynamics enhancements
- Energy output is now supported for structural, acoustic, and coupled structural-acoustic eigenvalue procedures
- Temperature dependent viscous and structural damping can be specified in Abaqus/Standard
- Performance of the complex eigensolver and brake squeal workflow has been significantly improved
- A hybrid CPU-GPU implementation of the steady state dynamics procedure significantly improves performance
- Structural energy flow, power flow and acoustic radiated energy and power can now be computed for coupled structural-acoustic steady state dynamics
Modeling and visualization enhancements
- Usability of the bolt loading capability in Abaqus/CAE has been significantly improved
- Predefined field variables can now be defined in Abaqus/CAE
- Linear constrain equations defined in Abaqus/CAE can now include multiple nodes
- Default element types used for meshing can be specified in the environment file
- Free body diagrams now support composite solid elements
- Rendering performance for the discrete element method (DEM) has been significantly improved
- The path plot tool now supports creating a path from a pre-defined unsorted node set
Other key enhancements
- Results can now be imported from multiple previous simulations
- Partial activation of elements can be specified during a simulation
- The Abaqus Scripting Interface supports multiscale material modeling commands
- Unsymmetric matrix input is now supported
- Eulerian-type inlet and outlet conditions can be specified in SPH simulations
