Warning: The use of stiffness proportional material damping in ABAQUS/Explicit may reduce the stable time increment dramatically and can lead to longer analysis times. See “Material damping,” Section 20.1.1 of the ABAQUS Analysis User's Manual.
This option is used to provide material damping for modal dynamic analysis and for direct-integration dynamic analysis in ABAQUS/Standard and for explicit dynamic analysis in ABAQUS/Explicit.
Damping is defined in a material data block except in the case of elements defined with the *BEAM GENERAL SECTION option, the *ROTARY INERTIA option, the *MASS option, or the *SUBSTRUCTURE PROPERTY option. For the *BEAM GENERAL SECTION and the *SUBSTRUCTURE PROPERTY options the *DAMPING option must be used in conjunction with the property references. For the *MASS and the *ROTARY INERTIA options damping must be specified using either the ALPHA or the COMPOSITE parameter associated with these options.
Products: ABAQUS/Standard ABAQUS/Explicit
Type: Model data
Level: Part Part Instance
Set this parameter equal to the 
factor to create mass proportional damping in direct-integration dynamics (using the *DYNAMIC option in either ABAQUS/Standard or ABAQUS/Explicit), subspace-based steady-state dynamics, or complex eigenvalue extraction. The default is ALPHA=0. (Units of T–1.) This value is ignored in modal dynamics, except subspace-based steady-state dynamics.
Set this parameter equal to the 
factor to create stiffness proportional damping in direct-integration dynamics (using the *DYNAMIC option in either ABAQUS/Standard or ABAQUS/Explicit), subspace-based steady-state dynamics, or complex eigenvalue extraction. The default is BETA=0. (Units of T.) This value is ignored in modal dynamics, except subspace-based steady-state dynamics.
This parameter applies only to ABAQUS/Standard analyses.
Set this parameter equal to the fraction of critical damping to be used with this material in calculating composite damping factors for the modes (for use in modal dynamics). The default is COMPOSITE=0. This value is ignored in direct-integration dynamics in ABAQUS/Standard.