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Application of an Abaqus-PANDAS software for the simulation of coupled multi-field problems

Numerical simulations are widely used and have been proven as a powerful tool in several engineering disciplines, such as mechanical, civil, environmental and biomechanical engineering. However, apart from computational issues, such as numerical stability, the reliability of a simulated process strongly depends on the governing material model, especially, when strongly coupled multi-field problems come into play. Basically, material models are developed or improved either during academic or during industrial research projects and are then implemented into existing software packages. However, it often appears that these packages are either not well suited, or it requires considerable efforts to use them for the solution of complex initial-boundary-value problems (IBVP) in order to prove their capability in practically relevant scenarios.

The present work introduces a general interface between the research code PANDAS, which is a multi-field finite-element solver based on a monolithic solution strategy, and the commercial finite-element package Abaqus. The coupling is based on the user-defined element subroutine (UEL) of Abaqus. This procedure allows, on the one hand, a straight-forward embedding of all material models of PANDAS into Abaqus. On the other hand, it provides, in comparison to the native UEL subroutine of Abaqus, a user-friendly programming environment for user-defined material models with an arbitrary degree of freedom. Furthermore, the coupling exhibits minimal-invasive properties with respect to the IBVP definition process in Abaqus and allows for the parallel analysis of large-scale problems on high-performance computing clusters.

The Abaqus-PANDAS linkage can be applied to various coupled multi-field problems, such as partially or fully saturated soils, vacuum-assisted resin injections (VARI) of dry fibre fabrics, or chemically or electro-chemically driven swelling phenomena as they appear, for example, within hydrogels. Additionally, discontinuities, such as cracks, can be described for instance via phase-field models or by the extended finite-element method (XFEM).

Author(s):

Maik Schenke    
Institute of Applied Mechanics (CE), University of Stuttgart
Germany

Wolfgang Ehlers    
Institute of Applied Mechanics (CE), University of Stuttgart
Germany