The material editor contains several menus that allow you to add most of the material behaviors available in ABAQUS/Standard or ABAQUS/Explicit to a material definition. (For information on which material behaviors are available in ABAQUS/CAE, see Appendix A, “Keyword support.”)
The material editor menus reflect the division of all material behaviors into four categories: General, Mechanical, Thermal, and Other. Figure 12–8 shows the elasticity behaviors available under the Mechanical menu.
The lists of behaviors do not change to exclude behaviors that are invalid for the type of analysis you are running. In addition, ABAQUS/CAE does not check that the data that you enter in the editor are valid or that your materials are appropriate for your analysis type. For example, if you request a dynamic analysis, ABAQUS/Standard or ABAQUS/Explicit requires that you specify the density of the materials used in the model so that it can calculate mass and inertia properties of the model. If you do not provide a material density in the material definition, ABAQUS/CAE allows you to create the material; however, ABAQUS/CAE will report an error when you submit your analysis job.
When you select a behavior, the name of the behavior appears in the Material Behaviors list at the top of the editor, and the behavior becomes part of your material definition. For example, the list in Figure 12–9 reflects that the Elastic and Plastic behaviors have been chosen, as well as the Fail Stress suboption of the Elastic behavior.
Behaviors such as Elastic and Plastic are primary behaviors. Test data and suboptions such as Fail Stress appear beneath the corresponding primary behavior and are indented to indicate their subordinate position.
If you want to remove a behavior or suboption from a material definition, you can select that behavior or suboption from the Material Behaviors list and then click Delete.
If you are creating a new material, the selected behavior list is initially blank. As you select behaviors, the behavior name appears in the list; if there are too many behaviors to see at once, a scroll bar appears on the right side of the list.
