How to automate surface creation (from mesh elements) in Abaqus ?

Prithivirajan Veerappan @Prithivirajan_Veerappan

01 January 2019 1 8K Report

I would like to create a surface (on top side of a cube) in Abaqus

I am aware of doing it manually by using the following in GUI :

1) Tools->Surface-> Create

2) Select regions for surface by the angle

This is what I tried and failed :

Obtained all the nodes belonging to a face

Obtained all the elements connected to the nodes of step 1

Created an surface using the elements obtained in step 2 by appending the following lines in the .inp file

*Elset, elset=_Surf-1_S1, internal

130775,130776,...

( contains the list of all elements in step 2)

*Surface, type=ELEMENT, name=Surf-1

_Surf-1_S1, S1

Expected output and the output I got using the above process is provide din the link:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1zUmoBydXERCNeVNCwP4A30CRmvwWtDkJ

Could anyone guide me through the creation of surface with Python interface or directly appending information to the .inp file

Prithivirajan Veerappan

I figured out a way to do the above, one needs two pieces of information :

1. Element Ids belonging to the surface of interest

2. For each element above, we also need the corresponding face ID which is lying on the surface

For tetrahedron, there are four faces denoted by S1,S2,S3,S4

I used matlab to obtain the two pieces of information and and appended back to the .inp file

Format in which the information needs to be written:

Each row of numbers below can have a max. of 16 coulmns

###########################

*Elset, elset=_Surf-1_S1, internal

130775,130776,...

....

*Elset, elset=_Surf-1_S2, internal

130773,130779,...

....

*Elset, elset=_Surf-1_S3, internal

1305,1306,...

....

*Elset, elset=_Surf-1_S4, internal

130,136,...

....

*Surface, type=ELEMENT, name=Surf-1

_Surf-1_S1, S1

_Surf-1_S2, S2

_Surf-1_S3, S3

_Surf-1_S4, S4

** Section: Section-1

###########################

_Surf-1_S1 corresponds to all the elements with face S1 on the surface of interest and like wise for rest

Append this surface section right before the section definition!

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