Material Point Deletion
Material points that satisfy a user-defined failure criterion can be deleted from the model (see User-Defined Mechanical Material Behavior). You must specify the state variable number controlling the element deletion flag when you allocate space for the solution-dependent state variables, as explained in User-Defined Mechanical Material Behavior. The deletion state variable can be set to a value of one or zero inside user subroutine VUMULLINS. A value of one indicates that the material point is active, and a value of zero indicates that Abaqus/Explicit should delete the material point from the model by setting the stresses to zero. The structure of the block of material points passed to user subroutine VUMULLINS remains unchanged during the analysis; deleted material points are not removed from the block. Abaqus/Explicit will “freeze” the values of the strain energy density passed to user subroutine VUMULLINS for all deleted material points; that is, the values remain constant after deletion is triggered. Once a material point has been flagged as deleted, it cannot be reactivated.