{"id":129961,"date":"2020-06-29T22:28:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-30T02:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/live-cati-marketing.pantheonsite.io\/5-ways-to-improve-your-abaqus-solve-speed\/"},"modified":"2022-04-20T16:49:44","modified_gmt":"2022-04-20T20:49:44","slug":"5-ways-to-improve-your-abaqus-solve-speed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/?p=129961","title":{"rendered":"5 Ways to Improve Your Abaqus Solve Speed"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> and any other CAE software are operating as fast as possible, so that you aren’t stuck waiting around — time is money<\/strong>! Here are a five tips to improve your solve speed, excerpted from our 20-minute webinar (with 20-minute Q&A), which you can also watch for yourself at the end of this article.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1. Turn off multithreading<\/h3>\n
\"\"
\nHyperthreading benchmark on our machines (your results may differ)<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n

Modern CPUs almost universally have the capability to execute two threads per core. This is known as multithreading<\/strong> (or Hyperthreading for Intel or SMT for AMD), and it is commonly understood to mean you basically have double the CPU count, but that\u2019s not quite true since it doesn\u2019t work for every application<\/strong>. Due to the nature of FEA calculations, Abaqus is one of those applications.<\/p>\n

If you leave multithreading on, Abaqus will run, but it may not run at full speed<\/strong>. The magnitude of that difference may depend on a number of factors between hardware, OS, and model. You can turn off Hyperthreading\/SMT in your motherboard’s BIOS and benchmark a run to quantify that difference.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

2. Stay up-to-date on your software<\/h3>\n

A new version of Abaqus may seem like a complication to a system that’s already working, but it’s always an opportunity to find performance improvements, as such improvements are a regular refrain in the yearly release notes. Moreover, you can have multiple versions of Abaqus installed at once, so your old versions are not at risk. What you stand to gain is:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • Flat-out speed increases<\/li>\n
  • Reduced restrictions of various functionalities<\/li>\n
  • New features and models (like element formulations and material behaviors)<\/li>\n
  • Bug fixes<\/li>\n
  • And more<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Read the Abaqus release notes at least on a yearly basis (ideally, the mid-year updates as well) to make sure you’re not leaving anything on the table (especially since you’re already paying for it).<\/p>\n

    3. Control your internal tetramesh<\/h3>\n
    \"\"
    \nHow to adjust internal tet size in Abaqus\/CAE<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    \n

    When you tetramesh a thick part, obviously it’s filled with tet elements inside, and they’re probably second-order. Take a look inside your parts some time — that’s a whole a lot of nodes, and they scale the runtimes geometrically. Do you need them all?<\/p>\n

    Your finest mesh is on the outside surface, and your mesher slowly grows the size of your tet elements as it fills inward toward the center of the volume. You may be able to increase that growth rate and save a lot of run time without affecting stiffness.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    <\/div>\n

    4. Start using general contact, even in Abaqus\/Standard<\/h3>\n

    If you’ve been using Abaqus for a while, you may be very used to defining contact pairs for all your interactions. But it’s a pain in the butt — it takes forever, and it can get hard to manage if there’s a lot of them. The good news, is that general contact is now an excellent choice not just for Abaqus\/Explicit, but also for Abaqus\/Standard. It is faster to set up, and it converges more easily. If you choose automatic “all exterior” detection, just be sure to account for any preexisting penetrations, component misfits, or unintended emergent contact behavior mid-scenario.<\/p>\n

    5. Understand what controls stable time increments in Abaqus\/Explicit<\/h3>\n

    In Explicit, the speed of your run is governed by the length of your model’s “stable time increment”. Here’s what affects that:<\/p>\n

      \n
    • Element size: larger elements, longer stable increment<\/li>\n
    • Material density: higher density, longer stable increment<\/li>\n
    • Material stiffness: lower stiffness, longer stable increment<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      The most important items is the first — element size. If you’re mindful of your mesh, you can do your best to eliminate small elements (which may involve some engineering judgment) and enjoy a faster solve. You may or may not be able to control the latter two items, but you can know what to expect. You can also use mass scaling features to artificially mitigate the adverse effects of small elements. More on this in the webinar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":129962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1084,1240],"tags":[1248],"class_list":["post-129961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-design-analysis","category-abaqus-unified-fea","tag-cae-tech-tips"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n5 Ways to Improve Your Abaqus Solve Speed - Computer Aided Technology - FEA Experts<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The speed of your FEA solves has a huge impact on your efficiency as an engineer and as a business. 4Here are five tips to help you compute faster.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"5 Ways to Improve Your Abaqus Solve Speed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The speed of your FEA solves has a huge impact on your efficiency as an engineer and as a business. 4Here are five tips to help you compute faster.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/blog\/5-ways-to-improve-your-abaqus-solve-speed\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Computer Aided Technology\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ComputerAidedTechnology\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-06-30T02:28:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-04-20T20:49:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/mg_6420.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"700\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"467\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Zack Yates\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@CATISolidWorks\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@CATISolidWorks\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Zack Yates\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/blog\/5-ways-to-improve-your-abaqus-solve-speed\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/blog\/5-ways-to-improve-your-abaqus-solve-speed\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Zack Yates\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/#\/schema\/person\/e7be536f18e4d41e18d0334b5a34fc80\"},\"headline\":\"5 Ways to Improve Your Abaqus Solve Speed\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-06-30T02:28:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-04-20T20:49:44+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/blog\/5-ways-to-improve-your-abaqus-solve-speed\/\"},\"wordCount\":713,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/blog\/5-ways-to-improve-your-abaqus-solve-speed\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/mg_6420.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"CAE Tech Tips\"],\"articleSection\":[\"DESIGN ANALYSIS\",\"Abaqus Unified FEA\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/blog\/5-ways-to-improve-your-abaqus-solve-speed\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/blog\/5-ways-to-improve-your-abaqus-solve-speed\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/blog\/5-ways-to-improve-your-abaqus-solve-speed\/\",\"name\":\"5 Ways to Improve Your Abaqus Solve Speed - 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