ABAQUS / Answers

Answers to Common ABAQUS Questions Fall 1994

Contents
Beam elements: Torsion and warping Animation Postprocessing the ABAQUS results (.fil) le 1 2 4

Beam Elements: Torsion and Warping

This is a continuation of an article on beam elements which began in the last issue of ABAQUS/Answers. In this issue we focus on the effect of torsion and warping. Torsion refers to the twisting of a structural member about its longitudinal axis. Structural members are often subjected to torsional moments. These occur in almost any threedimensional frame structure. Loads which cause bending in one member may cause twisting in another, as in the gure below. Torsion is also produced when a member carries a shear force that does not act through its shear center, the position in the cross section through which a load must act to avoid twist. A shear force produces a twisting moment equal to the force times its Torsion induced in a framed structure. eccentricity with respect to the shear center. This is important because the centroid and the shear center often do not coincide in open, thin-walled beam sections (see below). If the nodes are not at the shear center of the cross section (node location in beam sections is discussed later), the section may twist under either concentrated forces or distributed loads. The effect of eccentric loading can be seen in the deection of a cantilever I-beam (above right). Depending upon the cross section dimensions, the twisting can be signicant.
Approximate locations of shear centers, s, and centroids, c, for a number of beam cross sections.

c s c

s c

c,s s c

The torsional response of a thin open section is very different from that of a solid circular shaft, where all cross sections normal to the beam axis remain plane under torsional loading. If the cross section is not circular, plane cross sections do not remain plane under torsion: they warp. Warping introduces longitudinal strains as the section twists and signicantly affects the torsional stiffness. In the case of open, thin-walled beams, the constraint of the axial warping strains provides the primary source of torsional stiffness. Otherwise these open sections have very little resistance to torsional loading. Warping restraint also introduces axial stresses which can affect the beams response to other types of loading. The stresses and strains in the I-section cantilever shown above vary signicantly, depending on whether warping is prevented at the xed end. Since the cantilever shown above is modeled with shell elements, the boundary conditions at the xed end automatically constrain any warping displacement there. With beam elements, warping may or may not be restrained. While warping constraint signicantly affects torsional stiffness for open thin-walled sections, the torsional stiffness of other types of sections depends primarily on the materials shear modulus, G, and a torsion constant, J. The torsion constant depends upon the shape and the warping characteristics of the beam cross section. To calculate the correct torsional stiffness, ABAQUS identies three different classes of beam cross section: solid sections; closed, thin-walled sections; and open, thin-walled sections. The calculation of the warping behavior assumes that the warping displacements in the cross section are small. The non-circular RECT and TRAPEZOID solid cross sections are treated as beams in which warping is unrestrained. This is because warping constraints would only affect the solution in the immediate vicinity of the constrained end. Beam elements B31, B32, B33, B34, B31H, and B32H may all be used for these cross sections. These same elements are also appropriate for closed, thinwalled sections (PIPE, BOX, and HEXAGON section types), since they also assume unrestrained warping. Section
Fixed End 100 lb
3 1 2

Cantilever

I - Beam loaded off axis

MAG. FACTOR =+5.0E+00

DISPLACED MESH

ORIGINAL MESH

0 lb

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ABAQUS/Answers

type ARBITRARY is treated as a closed thin-walled section if the coordinates of the rst and last points are identical. Open, thin-walled sections are very exible in torsion when warping is unrestrained. The variation of the warping induced axial deformation over the cross section is dened by the sections warping function. The magnitude of this function is treated as an extra degree of freedom, 7, in a special family of elements: B31OS, B32OS, B31OSH, and B32OSH. Constraining this degree of freedom prevents warping. Nonzero values represent the warping amplitude the scale factor of the axial displacement eld in the shape of the warping function. A value of 1.0 implies a maximum axial displacement of 1.0 due to warping. Open thin-walled shapes such as a channel (dened as an ARBITRARY section) or an I-section should usually be modeled as open section beams. The regular beam elements may be used, but no axial stress due to warping can evolve and the response will be very different from the open section element formulation with warping constraint. Independent nodes should generally be used in each branch at a connection in a frame structure, since the amplitude of warping will usually be quite different in each branch. However, if the connection is designed so that it prevents warping in all members that intersect there, only one node is needed, with a boundary condition applied to degree of freedom 7.

Cross sectional area. Second moments of inertia about the centroid. Products of inertia about the centroid. Polar moment of inertia about the centroid. Torsion constant. Centroid coordinates relative to the nodal location in the cross section. Shear center coordinates relative to the nodal coordinates. For open section beams elements, ABAQUS also reports warping related properties. When beams are used as stiffeners with shell elements it is convenient to have the same nodes dene both the beams and the shells. This is possible when providing the section property data for section types I, TRAPEZOID, and ARBITRARY. Geometric properties for BEAM GENERAL SECTION, SECTION=GENERAL must be given with respect to the centroid and shear center, but the SHEAR CENTER and CENTROID suboptions allow these locations to be offset from the node in the cross section, thus making it easier to model stiffeners.
same node used for shell and beam shell section
2
2.0

Use separate nodes for the members connected at this location. Constrain DOFs 1-6 to be equal at the connection but keep the warping degree of freedom, 7, independent and constrain it separately if necessary.
0.2

0.2 1 0.2 2.4

Input syntax if the reference axis (nodal position) of the section to the left is shifted to the midsurface of a shell, of thickness=0.1, attached to the bottom ange. *BEAM [GENERAL] SECTION, SECTION=I -0.05, 2.4, 3., 2., .2, .2, .2 The rst data item refers to the offset of the beam node from the bottom of the section in the direction of the local 2-axis.

3.0

The regular three-dimensional beam elements use two stress components for constitutive calculations: one direct axial stress (output variable S11) and one shear stress due to torsion (S12). The shear stress acts along the section wall in a thin-walled section, and in the direction dened by the St. Venant warping function (which ABAQUS calculates automatically) for a solid section. Open section beams use only S11, since the torsional shear stresses are negligible in this case. The torsional stiffness calculations apply equally to BEAM SECTION or BEAM GENERAL SECTION. At the start of an analysis ABAQUS calculates a beam sections elastic stretching, bending, shear and warping properties. For all three-dimensional beam elements, ABAQUS reports the following geometric properties in the model printout in the.dat le:

Animation
Animating results in ABAQUS/Post is a two stage process: Create an animation le using the SET, CAPTURE and SEQUENCE commands. Play back the animation using the ANIMATE command. The SEQUENCE command allows you to create a series of frames, by stepping through the restart le in a prescribed manner. The SET, CAPTURE command stores the screen images in a le in a neutral binary format. The time taken to store the image and the size of the animation (.flc) le are

ABAQUS/Answers

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independent of the contents of the screen. A color contour plot of a large, three-dimensional model will take the same time to store as a plot of a 10 element beam model. The physical size of the windowthe number of pixels determines how long the frame takes to store and how large the le will be.The smaller the size of the ABAQUS/Post window, the shorter the capture time and the smaller the size of the .flc le. The ANIMATE command plays back the .flc le. ABAQUS/Post normally loads the entire image le into memory. This means that the animation is fast and smooth. If there is not enough memory to store all the images, the image data are read directly from the le on disk. This will produce a less smooth animation sequence. A number of other considerations need to be borne in mind in order to create effective animation sequences. By default, ABAQUS/Post always scales the model to ll the screen. To ensure that the scale factor is constant during the animation, the SET, RESCALE=OFF command should be used before starting screen capture. The scaling required depends on how large the model is and how much it is going to deform. It is therefore desirable to set it to cope with the largest possible deformation. You can do this by selecting the restart state with the largest deformations, creating a deformed plot and then typing SET, RESCALE=OFF. In small displacement analysis ABAQUS/Post magnies the deformation so it is clearly visible. To avoid this magnication varying from increment to increment, constant magnication can be specied using the SET, DMAG or SET, CMAG commands before the capture is started. The rst thing ABAQUS/Post does after the command SET, CAPTURE has been typed is to store the image that is currently on the screen. It is therefore important to ensure that the rst image you require in the animation sequence is the image on the screen when SET, CAPTURE is typed. To avoid the rst frame appearing in the animation twice, any subsequent sequence commands should start from the second frame in the animation. The BSTEP and BINC parameters on the SEQUENCE command can be used to start the sequence at the desired point. For contour plots it is usually best to maintain one set of contour levels for the entire animation sequence using the SET, CMIN and SET, CMAX commands (by default ABAQUS/Post will set the contour levels to cover the range of data in the current plot). The smoothness of the animation depends on the number of frames and the changes occurring in the plot between each frame. For most animations it is desirable to have around 20 frames covering the period of the analysis. You may need more if the deformations are particularly large. You should ensure that enough states are stored in the restart le to create a reasonable animation.

SECTION POINT 1 PEEQ VALUE -INFINITY +2.22E-16 +4.42E-02 +8.85E-02 +1.32E-01 +1.77E-01 +2.21E-01 +2.65E-01 +3.09E-01 +3.54E-01 +3.98E-01 +4.42E-01

+4.87E-01 +INFINITY

SECTION POINT 1 PEEQ VALUE -INFINITY +2.22E-16 +4.42E-02 +8.85E-02 +1.32E-01 +1.77E-01 +2.21E-01 +2.65E-01 +3.09E-01 +3.54E-01 +3.98E-01 +4.42E-01

+4.87E-01 +INFINITY

SECTION POINT 1 PEEQ VALUE -INFINITY +2.22E-16 +4.42E-02 +8.85E-02 +1.32E-01 +1.77E-01 +2.21E-01 +2.65E-01 +3.09E-01 +3.54E-01 +3.98E-01 +4.42E-01

+4.87E-01 +5.23E-01

The following ABAQUS/Post commands create a simple animation le. The analysis used is Example Problem 4.2.14. To extract the input le use the command:
abaqus fetch input=4021401 job=punch

This extracts the input le from the examples directory in your ABAQUS installation and puts it into the current working directory as punch.inp. You should edit this le to modify the RESTART, WRITE command so that data are written every 10 increments, and then run the analysis. Then use the following commands in ABAQUS/Post to create the animation. (The commands may be put together and submitted as a journal le.) restart, file=punch SET UP THE VIEW zoom, factor=0.9 view, view=(1,1,1), up=(0,1,0) set, axisymmetric angle=180 detail, elset=metal set, center=(0,0,-18) set, ctitle=off, dtitle=off SCALE THE SCREEN draw, displaced set, rescale=off, set, undeformed=off, dcolor=off set, shade=on, normalsmooth=70 SET CONSTANT CONTOUR LEVELS set, cmin=0, cmax=0.487 set, clegend=(0.1,0.5)

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SET UP THE FIRST FRAME restart, step=1, inc=1 contour, var=peeq set, hide=on, erase=off colorset, elset=metal, color=black draw, displaced set, shade=on, erase=on START CAPTURING THE ANIMATION set, capture=punch.flc SEQUENCE THROUGH ALL STORED DATA sequence, time, bstep=2
&contour, v=peeq &set, hide=on, erase=off &colorset, elset=metal, color=black &draw, displaced &set, shade=on, erase=on &end CLOSE THE ANIMATION FILE set, capture=close

ABAQUS/Answers

The routines used to read the .fil le are: INITPF, with which you specify the name of the le, the initial unit number to read from, and whether a new .fil le will be written. DBRNU, which species the unit number for a particular le. DBFILE, which reads a record from a le. The le contains a series of records, each with a number of words. The rst word gives the number of words in the record. The second contains an integer key that identies the record type. The remainder of the record contains the data relevant to that particular record type. Section 6.1.1 of the Users manual describes these data for each type of record, explains how to extract the data from each record, and presents a simple example of a program that reads a results le. Chapter 7 of the ABAQUS/Standard Verication manual contains further examples of such programs. FORTRAN errors are the most common problem with user-written postprocessing programs. You should ensure that your code compiles successfully before attempting to link it with the ABAQUS libraries. Another common problem is that the compile and link commands may not be set correctly in the abaqus.env environment le. Consult the ABAQUS Site Guide to determine the correct commands for your computer. The libraries supplied with the ABAQUS installation are created using a particular version of the FORTRAN compiler and operating system. If your machine does not have compatible FORTRAN and operating system levels your program may not link successfully with the ABAQUS libraries. The correct system requirements for all machines are given in the ABAQUS Site Guide. The FILE FORMAT option allows the .fil le to be written in ASCII format, so that it may be moved between dissimilar computers. The ascl command line option also allows .fil les to be converted between binary and ASCII format . ASCII format les are not in a readable form: they must be accessed through the interface routines described above.

To play back the animation use the ABAQUS/Post command: animate,file=punch.flc,direct,filecolors

Postprocessing from the ABAQUS Results File

The results (.fil) le produced by ABAQUS is a sequential le, in binary or ASCII format, in which each record contains a set of results data. The format of the le is described in Chapter 6 of the Users manual. The .fil le can be used for xy plots in ABAQUS/Post, to transfer results to external postprocessors, or to postprocess results with your own programs. FORTRAN interface routines are supplied with the ABAQUS installation to allow you to access the .fil le and extract the contents of any record. These routines must be called from within a FORTRAN program which is compiled and linked with the ABAQUS libraries. This is done by using the make option. To compile and link a program stored in a le prog.f, use the command:
abaqus make job=prog user=prog.f

ABAQUS

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