Tutorial I3 - IsightAbaqus

Isight Tutorial Number 3.
Abaqus integration with Isight:

optimization of a drain cover.
Stefano Morlacchi
December 2014
Simuleon B.V.
Sint Antoniestraat 7 5314 LG Bruchem
T. +31(0)418-644699 F. +31(0)418-644690 E. info@simuleon.com W. www.simuleon.com
1. Introduction
This tutorial aims at optimizing a drain cover using Abaqus to simulate a uniform
pressure loading on top of the drain and Isight to drive the optimization process. It
is a multi-objective problem since both the cost of the drain (volume of material)
and the vertical displacement need to be minimized. A constraint on the maximum
stress is defined as well to ensure that the material does not exceed a safety
threshold equal to half of its yielding point.
In this example, the two design variables are the thickness of the cover and the
vertical dimension of the cover cuts. The cover is modelled with S4R shell elements
while a uniform pressure equal to a total force of 10000 N is applied on top of the
cover in order to simulate the weight of a vehicle parking over it.
When you complete this tutorial, you will be able to:

- Include an Abaqus component within an Isight workflow.
- Setup a multi-objective analysis with design constraints using an
optimization genetic algorithm.
- Use the calculator component.
- Post-process results to identify the Pareto from and series of optimal
solutions.
Preliminaries
1. Open the Abq_Drain_Cover.cae Abaqus file and look at the drain cover
model already created. Look at the part definition, material properties, loading
and boundary conditions. In particular, look at the cut extrusion section sketch
(Fig. 1) and try to change the vertical dimension of the cut. Run the Job called
DRAIN_COVER and look at the results obtained (Fig. 2).
Simuleon B.V.
T. +31(0)418-644699 F. +31(0)418-644690 E.info@simuleon.com W. www.simuleon.com
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Figure 1. Section sketch of the cut extrusion. The vertical dimension of the three
cuts is highlighted in red. The orange circle shows the ‘Edit Dimension’ tool.
Figure 2. Example of the results of the drain cover simulation. Contour map of
Von Mises stresses.
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2. Setting up the Isight workflow
- Open a new standalone Isight Design Gateway.
- Sequentially, drag an Abaqus and a Calculator component from the Application
Components Tab onto the lower black arrow, reproducing the workflow shown
below (Fig. 3).
- Change the Task1 process component to an Optimization component by right-
clicking the Task1 palette and selecting Change To  New in the menu and
Optimization in the ‘Select New component’ dialog box (Fig. 3).
Figure 3. Definition of the Isight workflow.
3. Edit the Abaqus Component

1. Double-click the Abaqus Component and enter the Input Tab. Browse to open
the Abaqus_Drain_Cover.cae file and click on Read File. As Isight finishes reading
the CAE file, some Abaqus features are recognized as potential input parameters
that can be used to modify the CAE file and can be included in the Isight
optimization workflow. Select both the Cover Cut Extrude dimension{0} and the
Section thickness as input parameters (Fig. 4).
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2. Enter the Execution Tab. Check that the execution command is correct
according to the setup of your system. In this case, add cpus=2 at the end of the
command line to use two processors in parallel.
abaqus.bat input=DRAIN_COVER.inp job=DRAIN_COVER interactive cpus=2
3. Enter the Output Tab and browse to select the DRAIN_COVER.odb results file
previously created. Click on READ file and select Step_1_S_mises_max,
Step_1_Mass and Step_1_U_mag_max as output parameters. Click OK and exit
the Abaqus component editor.
Figure 4. Configuration of the Abaqus component.
4. Edit the Calculator Component

The calculator component is used to calculate the cost of the drain cover by
multiplying the mass of the cover times the price per kg of cast iron (Fig. 5).
Remember that since the drawing is in mm, mass in Abaqus is tonnes.
Double click on the calculator component and write the following command to
create a new parameter called COST,
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COST=Step_1_Mass*1000*10.5
where 1000 is the scale factor to transform tonnes to kg and 10.5 is the cast iron
price per kg in £. Click OK.
Figure 5. Configuration of the Calculator component.
5. Edit the Optimization component and run the model
1. Double-click on the Optimization component. Select NSGA-II - Non-

dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm as Optimization technique in the drop
down menu. Enter 8 as Population size and 5 as Number of generations.
2. Move to the Variables Tab, select the two parameters as design variables and
enter the values shown in Fig. 6 to define the design space allowed for this
problem.
3. Move to the Constraints Tab, select Mises stress parameter and enter 160 MPa
as upper bound representing half of the yield stress (Fig. 7).
4. Move to the Objectives Tab, select both the COST parameter and the
displacement output parameter as the objectives to be minimized. Enter 100 and
5 as scale factor for the COST and displacement parameters, respectively (Fig. 8).
Click OK.
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5. Save the workflow (File  Save) and Run the analysis by right-clicking the
optimization component and selecting Run  Run Component.
Figure 6. Definition of design space.
Figure 7. Definition of optimization constraints.
Figure 8. Definition of optimization objectives.
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6. Optimization Post-Processing
While Isight is running (30 minutes), enter the Graphs tab of the Isight Run
Gateway and make sure the Optimization component is selected in the left model
tree. Click on the icon ‘Scatter plot 2D graph’ and in the appearing dialog boxes,
select COST as X data and maximum displacement as Y data (Fig. 10). The plot
will show all the data points analysed. Blue dots correspond to all the optimal
solutions composing the Pareto front, red dots are the runs that exceed the stress
constraint defined while the black plots are the dominated solutions.
Take some time to explore other options such as Constraint Overlay 3D graphs,
Multiaxis graphs etc.
Figure 10. Results of optimization process.
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Isight Tutorial Number 3.

Abaqus integration with Isight:

When you complete this tutorial, you will be able to:

Figure 3. Definition of the Isight workflow.

3. Edit the Abaqus Component

Figure 4. Configuration of the Abaqus component.

4. Edit the Calculator Component

Figure 5. Configuration of the Calculator component.

5. Edit the Optimization component and run the model

1. Double-click on the Optimization component. Select NSGA-II - Non-

Figure 6. Definition of design space.

Figure 7. Definition of optimization constraints.

Figure 8. Definition of optimization objectives.

Figure 10. Results of optimization process.

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