Products: Abaqus/Explicit Abaqus/CAE
Benefits: You can now leverage the intrinsic strengths of Lagrangian finite elements and smoothed particle hydrodynamic (SPH) methods when modeling a body. You can use finite elements to create the model and allow these elements to convert to SPH particles during the analysis.
Description: For an analysis involving the conversion of continuum elements to SPH particles, you start by defining a part as usual. You mesh the part with C3D8R, C3D6, or C3D4 reduced-integration elements or a combination of these elements. You then specify that these “parent” elements are to convert to internally generated SPH particles when a user-specified criterion is met. Gravity loads, contact interactions, initial conditions, mass scaling, and output requests associated with the parent elements or nodes of the parent elements will be transferred appropriately to the generated particles upon conversion.
By default, the smoothed particle hydrodynamic method implemented in Abaqus/Explicit uses a cubic spline as the interpolation polynomial; quadratic and quintic interpolators are also available.
The implementation is based on the classical smoothed particle hydrodynamic theory. In addition, you have the option of using a mean flow correction configuration update, commonly referred to in the literature as the XSPH method, as well as a corrected first-order consistent kernel, referred to as the normalized SPH (NSPH) method.
Mesh module: MeshElement Type: Conversion to particles: Yes