This is the Example Problems Manual for ABAQUS. It contains many solved examples that illustrate the use of the program for common types of problems. Some of the problems are quite difficult and require combinations of the capabilities in the code.

The problems have been chosen to serve two purposes: to verify the capabilities in ABAQUS by exercising the code on nontrivial cases and to provide guidance to users who must work on a class of problems with which they are relatively unfamiliar. In each worked example the discussion in the manual states why the example is included and leads the reader through the standard approach to an analysis: element and mesh selection, material model, and a discussion of the results. Many of these problems are worked with different element types, mesh densities, and other variations.

Input data files for all of the analyses are included with the ABAQUS release in compressed archive files. The abaqus fetch utility is used to extract these input files for use. For example, to fetch input file boltpipeflange_3d_cyclsym.inp, type

abaqus fetch job=boltpipeflange_3d_cyclsym.inp

Parametric study script (.psf) and user subroutine (.f) files can be fetched in the same manner. All files for a particular problem can be obtained by leaving off the file extension. The abaqus fetch utility is explained in detail in “Execution procedure for fetching sample input files,” Section 3.2.12 of the ABAQUS Analysis User's Manual.

It is sometimes useful to search the input files. The findkeyword utility is used to locate input files that contain user-specified input. This utility is defined in “Execution procedure for querying the keyword/problem database,” Section 3.2.11 of the ABAQUS Analysis User's Manual.

To reproduce the graphical representation of the solution reported in some of the examples, the output frequency used in the input files may need to be increased. For example, in “Linear analysis of the Indian Point reactor feedwater line,” Section 2.2.2, the figures that appear in the manual can be obtained only if the solution is written to the results file every increment; that is, if the input files are changed to read

*NODE FILE, ..., FREQUENCY=1

instead of FREQUENCY=100 as appears now.

In addition to the Example Problems Manual, there are two other manuals that contain worked problems. The ABAQUS Benchmarks Manual contains benchmark problems (including the NAFEMS suite of test problems) and standard analyses used to evaluate the performance of ABAQUS. The tests in this manual are multiple element tests of simple geometries or simplified versions of real problems. The ABAQUS Verification Manual contains a large number of examples that are intended as elementary verification of the basic modeling capabilities.

The verification of ABAQUS consists of running the problems in the ABAQUS Example Problems Manual, the ABAQUS Benchmarks Manual, and the ABAQUS Verification Manual. Before a version of ABAQUS is released, it must run all verification, benchmark, and example problems correctly.