ABAQUS/Explicit: Restart request causing Analysis to terminate unexpectedly

[ShadowWarrior]

I'm using version 6.14-1, requesting 200 Restart interval (Error happens for 100 intervals too).

But at some point in analysis, the following error pops up -

State File Translator exited with an error.

Note that the same error happens if I also tick Time Marks.

The History and Field output requests are at 200 intervals, with field output being at approximate times.

 

[ShadowWarrior]

Any help is appreciated regarding this problem. Its not possible to change the Abaqus version.

 

[Dave442]

Do you need 200 separate restart points? Does the same error occur if you select "overlay"? I think from you other posts that your model is quite large. Is there any chance your .stt and .res files get so big that you run out of memory/disk space maybe?

 

[ShadowWarrior]

I have tried 100 intervals too but same error pops up. "Overlay" only keeps the last interval and replaces the previous one as the analysis progresses, whereas I need an initial full run with restart points and then conduct restart analysis with varied failure parameters for the last 10-20% of the analysis (mechanical properties e.g. stress-strain diagram remains same). As you have guessed, this trick is to address such a large analysis.

Note that Abaqus 6.14-1 has a known bug (can't copy xy-data to clipboard in visualization module), which has been fixed in later release. Not sure my struggle with restart is also related to bug. Regarding the size of .res or .stt files, No they are not even 1GB and I have plenty of space left.

 

[Dave442]

I dont know what the problem is then. Can you contact technical support?

Whats preventing you from updating to v6.14-2? Or v2016?

 

[ShadowWarrior]

@Dave442 - I think its been solved. I ran with 20 intervals and it finished successfully.

The .abq file is causing the problem I think, even with 20 intervals, the size is 30GB. Abaqus was having difficulty in writing data to this huge file, while analysis was going on full tandem with usual read/write operation to SSD.

This is just my speculation, any other idea/solution is welcome.

 

[IceBreakerSours]

Wowzer! Keep us posted on what's going on here.

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[Dave442]

Sorry, the .abq file is an explicit restart file. Was it getting so large that you ran out of memory?

 

[ShadowWarrior]

Machine has 96 GB RAM, so no. I believe it has something to do with read/write (I/O) operations. The size of .abq file is approximately equal to .odb file!

For future reference -

http://www.egr.msu.edu/software/aba...usb/default.htm?startat=pt04ch09s01aus45.html

When you run an analysis, you can write the model definition and state to the files required for restart.
In Abaqus/Standard these files are the restart (job-name.res; file size limited to 16 gigabytes), analysis database (.mdl and .stt), part (.prt), output database (.odb), and linear dynamics and substructure database (.sim) files.
In Abaqus/Explicit these files are the restart (job-name.res; file size limited to 16 gigabytes), analysis database (.abq, .mdl, .pac, and .stt), part (.prt), selected results (.sel), and output database (.odb) files.
These files, collectively referred to as the restart files, allow an analysis to be completed up to a certain point in a particular run and restarted and continued in a subsequent run. The output database file only needs to contain the model data; results data are not required and can be suppressed.

 

[Dave442]

Sorry, I meant did the .abq file get so big that it completely filled your hard drive?

I've had this happen with standard analyses and there was an error in the .log file saying "unable to write to the .odb" or something along those lines. It would be interesting to know if explicit gives a different error like you have encountered? Or if your problem was something else.

 

[ShadowWarrior]

No, hard drive (SSD in my case) had plenty of space left. Not exactly sure what happened but I suspect that its related to enormous file size and difficulty associated with handling it.

20 intervals gave 30 GB file size, now imagine what will be the file size of 100 or 200 intervals! Unfortunately I did not look at the size of .abq file for 100 or 200 interval runs as I was focusing on .stt and .res files only.

 

[Dave442]

OK, thanks for the response.