Large strain hysteresis is a common phenomenon of many elastomeric materials. These types of materials generally exhibit significant energy dissipation during cyclic loading. Accurately capturing this behavior can be extremely important for shock and vibration isolation applications. Some applications include shock isolation mounts, bushings, tires, etc.
Large strain hysteresis has been an option in Abaqus/Standard for some time now; however, no analogous model is currently available in Abaqus/Explicit. This Extension for the Abaqus Unified FEA product suite by SIMULIA, augments the capabilities of Abaqus/Explicit through a VUMAT material definition that is largely analogous to that provided in Abaqus/Standard through the *HYSTERESIS option.
The Abaqus/Explicit VUMAT supports the polynomial and reduced polynomial forms of the strain energy potential up to order three along with the form of the hysteresis model that is available in Abaqus/Standard.
Comparisons with Abaqus/Standard
Here we compare results with Abaqus/Standard for simple uniaxial tension, simple shear, and torsion simulations at a cycling frequency of 0.1 Hz. As can be seen the results compare quite favorably for these simple modes of deformation at low cycling frequencies where inertia effects are minimal.
Next we compare the results for an airspring example simulated at 0.1 Hz and 10 Hz cycling frequencies using:
Abaqus/Standard with Hysteresis [Static step-no inertia effects]
Abaqus/Explicit with no Hysteresis [Dynamic step-includes inertia effects]
Abaqus/Explicit with the Hysteresis Extension [Dynamic step-includes inertia effects]
The results shown for the 0.1Hz case indicate that the spring stiffness is somewhat sensitive to the hysteretic material behavior even at very low cycling frequencies as indicated by the Abaqus/Explicit results without hysteresis.
The results shown for the 10 Hz case also indicate that the spring stiffness is somewhat sensitive to the hysteretic material behavior and also to the dynamics of the system at this cycling frequency. It is interesting to note the high frequency content contained in the Abaqus/Explicit results if no hysteresis is included.
Additional Information
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This extension for Abaqus was developed by the SIMULIA Central region office. Contact the Central Region office for more specfic information on this extension.
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