Version 6.5 is a major release of ABAQUS. There are significant new features and enhancements in all ABAQUS products, including the following:
The Model Tree is a convenient new tool for navigating and managing models. The Model Tree appears in the ABAQUS/CAE main window, providing a visual description of the model object hierarchy. The Model Tree also provides shortcuts to the main menu bar, module toolboxes, and the various managers (“The Model Tree,” Section 2.5).
ABAQUS/Explicit analyses using domain-level parallelization require significantly less memory per domain as the number of domains increases in Version 6.5 compared to Version 6.4. The memory required for single-domain analyses has also been reduced for Version 6.5 (“Memory reductions for ABAQUS/Explicit analyses,” Section 2.10).
ABAQUS/Explicit offers a general capability for modeling progressive damage and failure in the Mises, Johnson-Cook, Hill, and Drucker-Prager plasticity models. Damage initiation criteria are available for ductile or shear fracture of metals and necking instability of sheet metal as well as damage initiation in cohesive elements with traction-separation response (“Progressive damage and failure,” Section 7.5).
A family of cohesive elements is supported in ABAQUS/Standard, ABAQUS/Explicit, and ABAQUS/CAE for modeling deformation and damage in finite-thickness adhesive layers between bonded parts. Cohesive elements are typically connected to underlying elements with surface-based tie constraints, so the mesh used for the cohesive layer can be independent of the mesh used for the bonded components (“Cohesive elements,” Section 8.6).
Numerous enhancements have been implemented to improve contact performance and robustness in ABAQUS/Standard and ABAQUS/Explicit (Chapter 11, “Interactions”).
The accuracy of ABAQUS/Standard contact stress results improved with the addition of a true surface-to-surface formulation for small-sliding contact to mitigate contact stress oscillations at interfaces, even for mismatched meshes. The new formulation also accounts for surface thicknesses and offsets (“Surface-to-surface small-sliding contact accounting for thickness,” Section 11.1).
Noise in contact and element stresses near the contact interface is reduced for most second-order element types in ABAQUS/Standard by specifying a softened pressure-overclosure relationship or using an augmented Lagrangian contact enforcement method (“Improved contact stresses for second-order elements,” Section 11.2).
Improved stabilization methods can be specified for ABAQUS/Standard multi-body contact problems where rigid body modes exist initially because contact is not present in the first solution increment. You can apply viscous stabilization for both normal and tangential motions to selected contact pairs, including a damping coefficient based on the stiffness of the underlying material (“Stabilization of multi-body contact problems with rigid body modes,” Section 11.11).
The ability to define and analyze cracks in ABAQUS/CAE increases the coverage of ABAQUS fracture mechanics functionality.
ABAQUS/CAE includes support for fracture mechanics analysis using an embedded seam with duplicate overlapping nodes. The crack definition can be used to perform fracture calculations using contour integrals (“Defining a crack in ABAQUS/CAE,” Section 12.5).
The position of the midside nodes of second-order elements can be adjusted using the ABAQUS/CAE Edit Mesh toolset to include a singularity at the crack tip for fracture mechanics analysis (“Using the Edit Mesh toolset to adjust the position of midside nodes,” Section 13.10).
In addition to improving boundary and surface meshing capabilities, ABAQUS/CAE Version 6.5 includes a completely new tetrahedral meshing algorithm (Chapter 13, “Meshing”).
Meshing a part in the Mesh module, as opposed to meshing a part instance from the assembly, allows the mesh to appear on each instance of the part although the part is meshed only once (“Meshing parts,” Section 13.1).
ABAQUS/CAE considers geometric curvature along edges to simplify the task of automatically seeding models that have holes of various sizes, blends, and other regions of high curvature with the appropriate target element size for meshing (“Support for curvature-based part seeding,” Section 13.3).
ABAQUS/CAE Version 6.5 includes a completely new tetrahedral meshing algorithm providing fast, reliable, automated meshing of very complex geometries. ABAQUS/CAE users have the option of selecting either the new (default) algorithm or the Version 6.4 tetrahedral meshing algorithm (“New tetrahedral meshing algorithm,” Section 13.4).
View cuts enable visualization of the interior or selected portions of the model or results by creating planar, cylindrical, or spherical sections through the model. View cuts can also be defined along a constant contour variable value or isosurface (“Viewing the interior of a model,” Section 15.12).
Version 6.5 is released on CD-ROM for the following combinations of supported operating systems and processors:
Linux/x86-32
Windows/x86-32
HP-UX/Itanium
Linux/Itanium
AIX/POWER
Technical SupportSystems Information on the ABAQUS Home Page. For more information on system requirements, see Appendix A, “System requirements,” of the ABAQUS Installation and Licensing Guide.On Windows platforms ABAQUS/CAE supports native printing, which automatically lists available printers and selects the current default printer. Standard Windows print settings and dialog controls are used to choose page formatting and printer-specific options (“Enhanced printing on Windows platforms,” Section 2.4).
3Dconnexion motion controllers are supported in conjunction with the mouse to manipulate the model view with one hand on the motion controller while using the mouse to select from the model with the other hand. ABAQUS/CAE provides a set of “Application Functions” available through the standard 3Dconnexion user interface providing shortcuts to view manipulation and display tools (“Support for 3Dconnexion motion controllers,” Section 2.8).
ABAQUS Version 6.5 uses FLEXlm Version 9.2 from Macrovision Corporation (upgraded from FLEXlm Version 8.2 for ABAQUS Version 6.4) for license management. For more information, see “Installing ABAQUS licensing,” Section 2.1.2 of the ABAQUS Installation and Licensing Guide.