You can define any number of materials within an ABAQUS model. Each material definition begins with a *MATERIAL option. The NAME parameter identifies the material's name, which is used to assign the material definition to specific elements in the model.
The material definition is one of the few situations in which the position of option blocks in the ABAQUS input file is important. All of the option blocks defining specific aspects of a material's behavior, such as its elastic modulus or density, must follow the *MATERIAL option directly. Furthermore, the material option blocks defining the behavior of a particular material cannot be interrupted by other nonmaterial options. ABAQUS issues an error message if it cannot associate a material behavior option block, such as *ELASTIC, with a prior *MATERIAL option.
For example, consider the material description of an elastic-plastic metal, which requires several material behavior options to supply the requisite data. In addition to the elastic and plastic property option blocks, ABAQUS/Explicit always requires a density. Thus, the complete material description would be:
