I am trying to do a dynamic explicit Abaqus analysis, where I squeeze the specimen with a plate with certain velocity. The rigid plate starts squeezing the specimen, slows down and stops at a certain point (around middle of the specimen). So when the plate stops, I want my elastic specimen to expand back and rise the plate. I define the velocity of the plate from boundary conditions tab. And specify its amplitude by tabular data. I define the velocity at 0 s as 1 m/s and at 0.1 to 0 m/s. So in this way the plate will have a decaying velocity which stops eventually at 0.1 seconds.

The problem is when the specimen wants to expand back and rise the plate, the plate does not move. First I tought maybe the plate is too heavy for the specimen to carry it but I tried the same analysis with a 1/1000 lighter plate and nothing changed. I think the way I define the velocity causes this. I think, when I define the velocity to be 0 at 0.1s, the plate just does not move anymore. It just acts like a wall. I do not know how to solve this problem.

Thank you in advance