*STEP CYCLING CONTROL

Specify sensor-based or contact wear-based criteria to control early termination of step cycling.

This option is used to specify a sensor-based or a contact wear-based criterion to trigger early termination of step cycling before a set number of step cycles are complete.

For a sensor-based criterion, the trigger involves satisfying a termination condition that depends on the sensor state and a sensor threshold value. Alternatively, you can specify accumulated contact wear distances and a threshold wear distance to trigger early termination of step cycling. For the wear-based criterion, you also specify a target maximum accumulated wear distance per step cycle to determine a step cycle scale factor used for wear calculations in the next step cycle.

This option can be activated in a step only if the step is part of a step cycle definition. You can include this option multiple times within a step, with different control definitions; early termination might be triggered by any of the definitions.

This page discusses:

See Also
*STEP
*STEP CYCLING
In Other Guides
Defining an Analysis
Contact Wear

Products Abaqus/Standard

Type History data

LevelStep

Required parameters

NAME

Set this parameter equal to the name associated with this step cycling control definition.

Optional parameters

ACTION

Set ACTION=END CYCLING (default) to break out of the step cycling loop altogether and consequently skip the remaining steps in the current step cycle.

CRITERION

Set CRITERION=SENSOR-BASED (default) to specify a threshold sensor value to trigger the intended action.

Set CRITERION=WEAR-BASED to specify a threshold wear distance to trigger the intended action.

Data lines to define sensor-based step cycling control

First line

  1. Sensor name.

  2. Label for threshold criterion (Max, Min, AbsMax, or AbsMin).

  3. Sensor threshold value.

Repeat this data line as often as necessary to define different termination criteria, potentially using different sensors.

Data lines to define wear-based step cycling control

First line

  1. Node set name or blank to denote the entire model.

  2. Label for threshold criterion (AbsMax to end cycling if any nodal wear value in the node set is over the threshold, or AbsMin to end cycling if all nodal wear values in the node set are over the threshold).

  3. Threshold wear distance.

  4. Target maximum wear distance accumulated per simulated wear cycle to determine step cycle scaling factor for contact wear in the next step cycle.

Repeat this data line as often as necessary to define local termination criteria.