ABAQUS TIPS

Pultruded GFRP are transversely isotropic material. Any plane containing the fiber direction is a
plane of symmetry. Five constants are needed to model the material and we have:

E2=E3; v12=v13; G12=G13 and G23=E2/[2(1+v23)]. We also have the restriction (vij/Ei)=(vji/Ej);
I,j=1…3; i#j.

More nodes per element imply more accuracy and less need for a fine mesh, but also imply higher
cost in terms of computer time. So quadratic elements are better than linear ones.

In a planar model a uniform loading is model as the ultimate force per unit width.

Use frontal direct method to solve the equation [step module] because it is rather efficient for FEA.
But when the analysis is nonlinear, the equations must be solved repeatedly, thus increasing the
computational time significantly.

The hashin damage model available in abaqus considered only 4 damage failure : fiber tensile and
compressive damage. Matrix cracking by shear or tensile. Delamination is not taken into account.
To include the delamination failure mode of the GFRP cohesive interface elements was inserted
at 0.5 of the inner and outer adherend.

Using viscous regularization with a small value of the viscosity parameter (small compared to the
characteristic time increment) usually helps improve the rate of convergence of the model in the
softening regime, without compromising results. The basic idea is that the solution of the viscous
system relaxes to that of the inviscid case as t/η→∞t/η→∞, where t represents time.

Defining damage - damage stabilization

Simulations including damage evolution often lead to convergence difficulties because of the
softening in the material model. Abaqus allows the use of viscous regularization to stabilize
the response during damage. For sufficiently small time steps, the tangent stiffness matrix will
then be positive definite. A viscosity coefficient can be specified as a suboption of Maxps
damage. It should be chosen in such a way that the influence of the stabilization on the final
results is small. To check this, the output ALLVD (viscous dissipation) can be compared to
ALLSE (strain energy). If ALLVD is not small compared to ALLSE, the viscous stabilization
is likely influencing results. Playing around with the viscosity coefficient can help obtain a
reasonable result within a reasonable amount of time.

Solution controls

To aid in obtaining a converged solution, the solution controls can be modified. From the step
module, select other => general solution controls => edit => step in which solution controls are
to be edited. Press continuewhen a warning message is displayed. In the time incrementation
tab, discontinuous analysis can be checked. This allows Abaqus to do more iterations before
checking whether the solution is going anywhere. In the first More tab, the parameter IA can be
increased from the default 5, to allow Abaqus more attempts before aborting the simulation. If
large cut-backs are required, increasing the number of attempts is useful.

QUASI-STATIC ANALYSIS USING ABAQUS EXPLICIT

The time period of the step in explicit is very important in quasi-static analysis as it can influence
the results. (We can use a step period of 2 s as a start).

A smooth load amplitude has to be defined in quasi-static analysis as any we don’t want to change
the kinetic or internal energy. The kinetic energy should be small with regards to the internal
energy.