Follow the steps below to run an analysis with Helius PFA using Abaqus.
Composite Material Manager is required to create Helius PFA-compatible composite materials. It is not used to create cohesive materials. Cohesive materials are defined using the Create Cohesive Material plug-in for Abaqus/CAE.
A Helius PFA-compatible composite material cannot be created inside Abaqus/CAE or using an Abaqus keyword inside an input file. It can only be created using Composite Material Manager. By default, materials are saved to a specific materials directory in your home directory:
%APPDATA%\Autodesk\Helius PFA 2019\Materials
where %APPDATA% is the value of the environment variable named APPDATA.
For additional information, refer to the Composite Material Manager User's Guide.
If a finite element model is created in Abaqus/CAE, a Helius PFA plug-in is used to define how the material created in the previous step is used in the model.
If a model is created using a general pre-processor, the Abaqus input name must be modified to facilitate an analysis with Helius PFA.
For additional information, refer to the User's Guide for Abaqus.
xStiff inserts the required extraneous stiffness parameters into the section definition(s). An input file that has not been modified by xStiff will not be able to be solved. xStiff creates a new input file with '_xs' appended to the input file name. Submit the '_xs' input file to the Abaqus solver.
The most convenient way to submit an analysis with Helius PFA is using the Abaqus Command Prompt. Additionally, an Abaqus input file that has been modified with xStiff can be imported into Abaqus/CAE and submitted within CAE.
For additional information, refer to the User's Guide for Abaqus.