The use of the HIN file and current functionality is described in the sections that follow.
There are several analysis parameters you can provide in addition to the parameters specified by the HELIUS arguments. The HIN file is an auxiliary text file created manually that contains these parameters and their associated keywords.
For proper usage, the HIN file must be named jobname.*hin, where *jobname is the name of the model input file. It must be in the same directory as the model input file. For example, when running the ANSYS input file example-job.ans, if example-job.hin exists in the same directory, the software will attempt to read this file in as a HIN file. The current functionality within the HIN file includes the following:
Material definitions and properties that reside within the HIN file always supersede any definitions or properties within the ANSYS user material definition (HELIUS macro) or the Helius PFA material file (mdata). For example, if instantaneous degradation damage evolution is defined within the user material, but the HIN file defines energy based degradation (Damage Evolution) the energy based degradation definition will take precedence over the instantaneous degradation definition. This rule is consistent with a migration towards the HIN file and away from user material constants. In future versions of Helius PFA user material constants will be deprecated for most functionality and the HIN file will be required.