You can define one or more layers of reinforcement (rebar) in shell sections by specifying a unique layer name for each rebar layer. You also select the name of the material forming each rebar layer and specify the cross-sectional area per bar, spacing, and orientation of the rebar in each layer.

To define the orientation of each rebar layer, you can specify an orientation angle or an orientation name. The angular orientation of a rebar layer is defined relative to the rebar reference orientation. You use the Assign menu to assign a rebar reference orientation to shell regions. If you specify an orientation name, you must supply the user subroutine ORIENT. For more information, see “Defining rebar layers,” Section 12.11.13, and “Assigning a rebar reference orientation,” Section 12.12.5.

In the Step module you must request output for rebar to include rebar output in the data that ABAQUS writes to the output database and to view plots of the rebar orientations in the Visualization module. In the Visualization module ABAQUS/CAE treats rebar layers as section points for output purposes, and you can create material orientation plots to show the rebar orientation.

For more information on rebar, see “Defining reinforcement,” Section 2.2.3 of the ABAQUS Analysis User's Manual.