I am trying simulate lithiation of a beam in Abaqus, where during this process, a plate buckles. I partitioned 3 section of the plate where the top and bottom represent the lithiated material ( different material properties) and the middle section represents the original material.

My goal is to apply heat (as to represent the chemical reaction for now) and then take the stress and strains of that analysis increment to calculate a new thickness for the lithiated material ( which I then change the partition height so that lithiated material section covers more of the whole plate), and then repeat the whole process where in every increment, stress and strain is extracted to calculate the new lithiated material thickness and repeated (increasing the lithiated material section after each increment), while the whole plate still buckles.

However I am stuck on whether to use the restart function or import analysis results from a previous analysis. As each increment the beam does bend more and the material also expands. Any thoughts how to approach this problem in order to somehow change the partition height of each increment whilst incorporating stress or displacements of the nodes from previous analysis ? Or would Mesh to Mesh solution be my best bet ?

Thank you