5 Use Cases for Abaqus CAE in Multiphysics Simulations

January 21, 2021 by Zack Yates

Simulations that show the effects of multiple environmental factors offer essential insights to product developers. From the early days of simulation, incorporating multiphysics simulations has been a core need for engineers and designers alike. Real-world product performance is often dynamic and nonlinear in nature, with scenarios playing out in unexpected or hard-to-predict ways—at least without the aid of advanced simulation programs. Static, dynamic, thermal, electrical, durability, and other stressors will have compounding effects that are more complex than 1 + […]

Abaqus 2021 Is Out Now!

November 23, 2020 by Hans Steiner

Abaqus Unified FEA (Abaqus/fe-safe/Tosca/Isight) 2021 is now available! You can now grab the new release at software.3ds.com! For more detailed instructions on downloading and installing Abaqus, see this blog post. Be sure to install the patch (called “FP.CFA.2042”) over the base installation (called “Golden”). Here are my highlights of what’s new: Abaqus/CAE You can specify the thickness (max COPEN) that determines the contacting surfaces to be tracked. New Abaqus/CAE plug-in to extract portion of results and store in a […]

6 benefits of running abaqus simulations on the cloud

6 Benefits of Running Abaqus Simulations in the Cloud

September 28, 2020 by Zack Yates

Cloud-based simulations for Abaqus deliver high-performance computing power at an affordable price point. Simulation is becoming increasingly integral to engineering departments across industries. The growing capabilities of simulation software have allowed engineering departments to integrate CAE processes into their research and development workflows at every stage, so that new designs can be tested at every point, from initial concept to final product validation. The increased utility of simulation has led to a growing demand for powerful simulation software that is […]

6 Use Cases for CAE Simulation in Electric Vehicle Drivetrains

September 22, 2020 by Zack Yates

Simulation expedites the design and development process leading to higher performance electric vehicles. As electric vehicles take over a larger share of the automotive market, OEMs and suppliers alike need to make use of every tool at their disposal to improve the performance of their vehicles. At present, no tool is more essential than CAE simulation when it comes to helping manufacturers test the design of EM components and how they contribute to the structure, efficiency, and performance of a […]

Abaqus 2020 Mid-Year Update 3 Is Out

July 20, 2020 by Zack Yates

We’re in the back half of the year, and Abaqus has received three updates on top of its yearly release, the latest having come out in May. These updates are always worth at least reading about because they include plenty of bug fixes, performance improvements, and new features. Anything in the release notes marked “2020 FDxx” is new since the original 2020 version. Note the many enhancements to Abaqus/CAE, new GPU acceleration for Windows, and increased model size limits. Product […]

5 Ways to Improve Your Abaqus Solve Speed

June 29, 2020 by Zack Yates

The speed of your FEA calculations is a huge deal. It often dictates the pace of your engineering and the capacity of your entire business. Therefore, it is important to do everything you can to ensure Abaqus and any other CAE software are operating as fast as possible, so that you aren’t stuck waiting around — time is money! Here are a five tips to improve your solve speed, excerpted from our 20-minute webinar (with 20-minute Q&A), which you can […]

4 Applications for FEA Simulation in Life Sciences

May 28, 2020 by Mohammad Kia

FEA simulations can be applied to life science to improve product design and advance medical research. Computer-aided engineering (CAE) has improved design and development processes in industries as diverse as aerospace, green energy, and high-tech devices. However, nowhere does CAE have a more direct impact on quality of life than in the life sciences. During my time as a graduate student, postdoctoral researcher, and CAE simulation engineer, I have had numerous opportunities to use finite element analysis (FEA) along with […]

abaqus message file showing negative eigenvalues

Abaqus Convergence Problems: What Do I Do About Negative Eigenvalues?

April 8, 2020 by Marcel Ingels

My simulation is not solving efficiently and diverges. I have negative eigenvalues in my message file, what does this mean? To answer this question, let us take a brief look at the finite element method. Your model is being turned into a representative stiffness that we call a stiffness matrix. These are the same matrices you studied a long time ago in math class. However, they have the possibility of having millions of entries as your model becomes large! The […]

How Do You Get Your FEA Units Consistent?

April 6, 2020 by Zack Yates

Unit choice and consistency is a topic that’s very near to a lot of engineers’ hearts. We tend to have strong opinions about other people’s differing opinions on it, and when we find unit mistakes, they can be some of the most spectacular screw-ups in engineering history. So how do we avoid embarrassing unit mismatches and surprise dimensional analysis? With handy reference and clever calculator tools: Getting Consistent Units: A Helpful Table Abaqus has no built-in system of units. Therefore, […]

What’s the Difference Between C3D10 and C3D10HS Elements?

March 27, 2020 by Astitva Tripathi

And When Do You Use One Over the Other? The C3D10 and C3D10HS are both 10 node tetrahedral elements in Abaqus with quadratic interpolation of displacement, otherwise colloquially referred to as “2nd order tets”. While the C3D10 is the standard or “vanilla” 2nd order tet element, C3D10HS is marketed as a 2nd order tet element with improved surface stress visualization. To understand how and why C3D10HS is different from C3D10, we need to quickly review how stress is calculated using […]