This section provides brief descriptions of some of the most significant new capabilities and enhancements available in Abaqus 6.10; refer to the table of contents for a complete list of new features.

• Abaqus/CFD, a new Abaqus product offering, is a computational fluid dynamics program with extensive support for preprocessing, simulation, and postprocessing in Abaqus/CAE. Abaqus/CFD provides scalable parallel CFD simulation capabilities to address a number of nonlinear coupled fluid-thermal and fluid-structural problems (“Abaqus/CFD analysis,” Section 6.1).

• A new iterative equation solver offers significant performance enhancements for simulations involving large, well-conditioned, blocky structures (“Iterative equation solver,” Section 6.4).

• Enhancements to the general direct-integration dynamic procedure make Abaqus/Standard an effective option for a broad range of dynamic simulations, in particular unstable quasi-static problems (“Dynamics enhancements,” Section 6.5).

• Several enhancements have been made to the coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian (CEL) analysis capabilities in Abaqus/Explicit:

  • An Eulerian mesh can now scale and translate during an analysis to follow the deformation of a surface or material. This option, which can be defined in Abaqus/CAE, allows you to create small, efficient meshes in applications that involve large translations or deformations (“Eulerian mesh motion in Abaqus/Explicit,” Section 9.1).

  • Eulerian boundary conditions can now be defined in Abaqus/CAE (“Eulerian boundary conditions in Abaqus/CAE,” Section 9.2).

• Contour integrals are now available as output when modeling fracture mechanics using the extended finite element method (“Contour integral evaluation improvements,” Section 6.6).

• Several existing analysis features can now be fully defined in Abaqus/CAE, including:

  • Direct cyclic and low-cycle fatigue analyses (“Direct cyclic analysis in Abaqus/CAE,” Section 6.15).

  • Model change definitions, which allow the deactivation and reactivation of model regions and contact pairs during an analysis (“Support for element and contact pair removal and reactivation in Abaqus/CAE,” Section 11.8).

  • Cylindrical elements (“Support for cylindrical elements in Abaqus/CAE,” Section 8.1).

  • Two-dimensional pressure penetration (“Pressure penetration in Abaqus/CAE,” Section 11.2).

• You can analyze structures subject to blast loading using the CONWEP air blasting model in Abaqus/Explicit (“CONWEP blast loading in Abaqus/Explicit,” Section 9.4).

• New material models extend the capabilities for realistic simulation in Abaqus:

  • Abaqus/Explicit now supports the Mohr-Coulomb plasticity model and the clay plasticity model (“Mohr-Coulomb plasticity in Abaqus/Explicit,” Section 7.1; “Critical state (clay) plasticity model in Abaqus/Explicit,” Section 7.2).

  • Viscoelasticity behavior can now be modeled with anisotropic elasticity and with the unidirectional fiber-reinforced composite damage model (“Viscoelasticity with anisotropic elasticity in Abaqus/Explicit,” Section 7.4).

• The surface and tet meshing algorithms in Abaqus/CAE have been enhanced to provide improved performance and robustness (“Mapped meshing performance,” Section 12.1).

• Material orientations can now be created in Abaqus/CAE based on the normal direction of the underlying geometry topology (“Enhancements to orientations for material orientations and composite layups,” Section 4.18).

• A midsurface model of shell elements can be created to replace thin solids (“Midsurface modeling,” Section 4.2).

• Planar view cuts are now available to display the interior of your model's geometry or mesh during the modeling process (“View cuts in Abaqus/CAE,” Section 4.3).

Abaqus 6.10 is released on DVD-ROM. Products supported on each of the following combinations of supported operating systems and processors are summarized in Table 1–1. Interactive products include Abaqus/CAE and Abaqus/Viewer. Analysis products include Abaqus/Standard, Abaqus/Explicit, and Abaqus/CFD.

For current and complete details on supported Abaqus products and platforms, including platform information for add-on products, interfaces, and translators, refer to the Abaqus systems information available through the Support page at www.simulia.com. For more information, see Appendix A, “System requirements,” of the Abaqus Installation and Licensing Guide.

The remaining chapters in this book provide details on these and other new features of Abaqus 6.10. In addition to the enhancements listed here, most of the known bugs in Abaqus 6.9 are corrected.