This section provides brief descriptions of some of the most significant new capabilities and enhancements available in Abaqus 6.9; refer to the table of contents for a complete list of new features.
The new general contact implementation in Abaqus/Standard, similar to the existing general contact functionality in Abaqus/Explicit, offers a simplified and highly automated method for defining contact interactions in a model (“General contact in Abaqus/Standard,” Section 11.1).
The ability to couple Abaqus/Standard and Abaqus/Explicit analyses using co-simulation allows for cost-effective solutions for complex models in which different model regions may benefit independently from the respective strengths of the two analysis programs; in particular, this technique can be used to incorporate substructures in an Abaqus/Explicit analysis (“Abaqus/Standard to Abaqus/Explicit co-simulation,” Section 6.1).
The implementation of the extended finite element method (XFEM) in Abaqus/Standard provides a powerful tool for simulating cracks along arbitrary, mesh-independent paths (“Modeling discontinuities using the extended finite element method (XFEM),” Section 6.2).
Abaqus/CAE offers several improvements for geometry and mesh display performance and reduced memory consumption (“Improved display of translucent objects,” Section 2.7; “Geometry and mesh performance enhancements,” Section 2.8).
The performance and robustness of surface meshing capabilities and the seeding algorithms in Abaqus/CAE have been improved to enable higher quality meshes to be generated easily on complex parts (“Improved seeding quality,” Section 12.4; “Enhanced quality and performance for surface meshing,” Section 12.1).
The formulation of large-strain viscoelasticity has been enhanced, and new materials are available for modeling rate-sensitive foams, non-Newtonian viscous shear behavior in fluids, and damage of ductile materials (“Low-density foam model,” Section 7.1; “Non-Newtonian viscous shear behavior for equation of state models,” Section 7.2; “Damage evolution models for ductile materials,” Section 7.4; “Finite-strain viscoelasticity,” Section 7.5).
New options are available for modeling fluid-flow and nonreflecting conditions at the boundary of an Eulerian mesh in Abaqus/Explicit (“Eulerian boundaries,” Section 9.1).
New Abaqus/CAE modeling techniques for spot welds and fasteners allow you to create attachment points that follow a model edge or conform to a regular pattern; attachment features can also be modified or suppressed after creation (“New attachment point creation method,” Section 4.2; “Enhancements to suppression of attributes in Abaqus/CAE,” Section 4.4).
A new 10-node tetrahedron element in Abaqus/Standard exhibits excellent bending performance and improved surface stress visualization (“New general-purpose tetrahedron with improved surface stress visualization,” Section 8.1).
New output filtering options in Abaqus/Explicit allow you to track the maximum, minimum, and absolute maximum values over all time for both field and history output in an analysis (“Filtering improvements and filtered field output,” Section 14.8).
A new option for displaying the free body resultant force and moment on a planar view cut allows free body data to be visualized and queried on any arbitrary plane (“Display of free body data on planar view cuts,” Section 14.1).
Abaqus 6.9 is released on DVD-ROM. Products supported on each of the following combinations of supported operating systems and processors are summarized below:
Windows/x86-32 (supports interactive and analysis products)
Windows/x86-64 (supports interactive and analysis products)
Linux/x86-64 (supports interactive and analysis products)
Linux/Itanium (supports analysis products only)
AIX/Power (supports analysis products only)
Abaqus 6.9 uses FLEXnet Licensing Version 10.8.7 from Acresso Software (formerly Macrovision) for license management. For more information, see Chapter 3, “Abaqus licensing,” of the Abaqus Installation and Licensing Guide.