ABAQUS Project 00 Notes






Rectangular beam with 500mm x 300mm cross sectional area. k=50MPa

Unitless interface requires consistency in units. We will use SI for simplicity.

  1. Select Parts. Select 2D Planar.
  2. Name: beam
  3. Type: Deformable
  4. Base Feature: Wire
  5. Approximate Size: 10
  6. Select Create Line. Create line 5 long. Select done.



  1. Parts>Beam>Section Assignments>Left click beam>Name Set Beam>
  2. Name Section: Beam. Select the line created previously to highlight red. Select Done.
  3. Select Create Section Icon. Name Beam-Section.
  4. Select Create Beam Profile Icon: Rectangular. Name: rect
  5. For 300mm by 500mm enter 0.3 and 0.5



  1. Select Create Material Icon
  2. Mechanical>Elasticity>Elastic
  3. Youngs Mod: 210e9
  4. Poisson: 0.3 (no difference will be made in 2d model but still needs to be filled)
  5. OK. OK. OK.




  6. Select Assign Beam Orientation. Left click line or select sets and select beam set made in step 7. May manually input vector but 0,0,-1 suffices. To accept, click enter and OK.

  1. To view beam: View>Part Display Options> Render Beam Profile. This is just an exercise and one may return the beam to the default viewing method after finished

  1. For springs: Parts>Engineering Features>Springs/Dashpots
  2. Select Connect Points to Ground (Standard)
  3. Hold shift and select both ends of line. Select OK and Done or hit Enter. Select Degree of Freedom: 2. 1 DOF for axial forces, 2 for bending, and 6 for rotational. Insert 50e6 for k=50MPa
  4. Engineering Features>Mesh>Seed Part
  5. The standard mesh size works fine for this exercise. Finer the mesh, the longer the calculation takes to run but the higher quality the results

  1. Select Mesh Part. Yes.

  1. One may choose between the machine code formulation (Shear Flexible) or Euler’s formulation (Cubic Formulation) in Mesh>ElementType>SelectBeam>SelectDone
  2. Assembly>Instances>Select All Relevant Parts>Select Apply>Select OK

  1. Select Steps (1). Load. Static (General). OK in next window.

  1. As per diagram, we establish an analytical field for later use. Input equation and continue.

  1. Select Load. Line Load. Select the AnalyticalField we just created. In the X-Direction we do not have load. 0. We have a Negative Y-Direction load, hence the -1. 0 for Z-Direciton.




  1. Double Click Jobs. Select OK for default name and default settings afterwards.
  2. Add Field Output Request. Double Click F-Output-1 and input NFORSCO by searching through forces.

  1. Right click created job. Select Submit.

  1. NFORSCO1 is Axial Force
  2. NFORCSO2 is Shear Force
  3. NFORCSO6 is Moment
  4. To plot results onto undeformed beam, long click on icon

Find me on ...