To define the damage evolution law:

Define a damage behavior as described in “Defining damage,” Section 15.15.7.

In the Edit Connector Section dialog box, toggle on Specify damage evolution and select the Evolution tabbed page.

If you are defining uncoupled force-based or constitutive motion-based damage initiation behavior,

Choose Motion as the Evolution type to define a motion-based damage evolution law, and choose the Evolution softening type.

• Choose Linear to define a linear damage evolution law. You provide the difference between the constitutive relative motion at ultimate failure and the constitutive relative motion at damage initiation.

• Choose Exponential to define an exponential damage evolution law. You provide the difference between the relative motions at ultimate failure and at damage initiation and the exponential coefficient.

• Choose Tabular to define the damage variable directly as a tabular function of the differences between the relative motions at ultimate failure and the relative motions at damage initiation.

Choose Energy as the Evolution type to define an energy-based damage evolution law. You provide the post-damage initiation dissipated energy at ultimate failure.

If you are defining uncoupled plastic motion-based damage initiation behavior,

Define an uncoupled plasticity behavior option. For more information, see “Defining plasticity,” Section 15.15.6.

Choose the Evolution type.

Choose Motion to define a motion-based damage evolution law, and choose the Evolution softening type. The equivalent plastic relative motion is calculated from the associated plasticity behavior definition.

• Choose Linear to define a linear damage evolution law. You provide the difference between the associated equivalent plastic relative motion at ultimate failure and the associated equivalent plastic relative motion at damage initiation.

• Choose Exponential to define an exponential damage evolution law. You provide the difference between the equivalent relative plastic motions at ultimate failure and at damage initiation and the exponential coefficient.

• Choose Tabular to define the damage variable directly as a tabular function of the differences between the equivalent relative plastic motions at ultimate failure and the relative motions at damage initiation.

Choose Energy to define an energy-based damage evolution law. You provide the post-damage initiation dissipated energy at ultimate failure.

If you are defining coupled force-based or constitutive motion-based damage initiation behavior,

Choose Motion as the Evolution type to define a motion-based damage evolution law and do the following:

Choose the Evolution softening type.

• Choose Linear to define a linear damage evolution law. You provide the difference between the equivalent motion at ultimate failure and the equivalent motion at damage initiation.

• Choose Exponential to define an exponential damage evolution law. You provide the difference between the relative motions at ultimate failure and at damage initiation and the exponential coefficient.

• Choose Tabular to define the damage variable directly as a tabular function of the differences between the relative motions at ultimate failure and the relative motions at damage initiation.

Select the Evolution Potential tabbed page, and define at least one force potential term. For more information, see “Specifying potential terms,” Section 15.15.15.

Choose Energy as the Evolution type to define an energy-based damage evolution law. You provide the post-damage initiation dissipated energy at ultimate failure.

If you are defining coupled plastic motion-based damage initiation behavior,

Define a coupled plasticity behavior option. For more information, see “Defining plasticity,” Section 15.15.6.

If the associated coupled plasticity definition includes at least two terms in the force potential, the data that you provide for damage evolution may also be a function of the mode-mix ratio. The Mode-Mix Ratio defines the relative weight of the first two terms in their contribution to the potential. See “Mode-mix ratio” in “Connector plastic behavior,” Section 25.2.6 of the ABAQUS Analysis User's Manual, for information on how this quantity is defined.

Choose the Evolution type.

Choose Motion to define a motion-based damage evolution law, and choose the Evolution softening type. The equivalent plastic relative motion is calculated from the associated plasticity behavior definition.

• Choose Linear to define a linear damage evolution law. You provide the difference between the associated equivalent plastic relative motion at ultimate failure and the associated equivalent plastic relative motion at damage initiation.

• Choose Exponential to define an exponential damage evolution law. You provide the difference between the equivalent relative plastic motions at ultimate failure and at damage initiation and the exponential coefficient.

• Choose Tabular to define the damage variable directly as a tabular function of the differences between the equivalent relative plastic motions at ultimate failure and the relative motions at damage initiation.

Choose Energy to define an energy-based damage evolution law. You provide the post-damage initiation dissipated energy at ultimate failure.

On the Evolution tabbed page, toggle on Specify affected components and toggle on the forces or moments that are consistent with the available components of relative motion that will be affected by the damage evolution law.

Choose the Degradation type to specify the contribution of this damage behavior to the overall damage effect if several damage behaviors are defined for the same connector section.

Choose Maximum to compare the damage value associated with this behavior to the damage values from any other damage behaviors defined for this connector section and consider only the maximum value for the overall damage.

Choose Multiplicative to combine the damage values for all the damage behaviors associated with this connector section in a multiplicative fashion to obtain the overall damage.

To define a damage evolution law that depends on temperature or field variables:

Toggle on Use temperature-dependent data to define behavior data that vary with temperature. A column labeled Temp appears in the data table.

To define behavior data that depend on field variables, click the arrows to the right of the Number of field variables field to increase or decrease the number of field variables. Field variable columns appear in the data table.

Enter the appropriate damage evolution law data in the table. You can enter data into the table using the keyboard. Alternatively, you can click mouse button 3 anywhere in the table to view a list of options for specifying tabular data. For detailed information on each option, see “Entering tabular data,” Section 3.2.7.