ABAQUS job has submitted, but does not run even after weeks. Anyone able to help fix this issue? 1

[JamesPowell]

Hey everyone,
I am using ABAQUS to run some cyclic loading tests on a series of segmental columns for my final year thesis. I have tried to submit my first job for analysis but it never runs, it just says "submitted".

The .log files still say the job is in the queue, but I have been having the same problem for a while and haven't been able to run the job for a few weeks - and I have 24 jobs which I must run!

My university has 7 licenses available for ABAQUS, and most of the time when I log in only one other license is being used, so I am doubtful that one other student is using all of the 'tokens' for the past 3 weeks.
I have tried deleting the .lck files but this still doesn't work.

I have also noticed that I still have a few .log files in my work directory for previous jobs for the same model which I submitted and then deleted, but I am unable to delete these as the computer says they are open in SMAPython. Is there any way to kill or delete these jobs? Could these possibly be slowing everything down?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you!

 

[FEA way]

Make sure that there are no jobs running (or being suspended) in the background - stop all solver processes visible in Task Manager and reboot the machine. Do you use parallel computing ? Maybe the number of CPUs that you want to use requires more computational tokens than you have. Also try running the job from command line, without using Abaqus/CAE.

 

[JamesPowell]

I have a very strong feeling that it is a licensing issue, but I am not sure. Is it possible that one of the earlier jobs I submitted and deleted could have had an error and cannot run so it is now clogging up the queue for the server?
I have checked Task Manager and there isn't anything running in the background from what I can see there.

How do I run the job from the command line? I am still new to the software and have a lot of learning to do.

 

[FEA way]

If there are no active solver processes then nothing should block tokens.

Open command window and type: abaqus j=inp_file_name interactive cpus=number_of_cpus_to_use

 

[JamesPowell]

It wasn't working using the command window just before, but it works for me now, thank you!
However I have a new issue - when my job begins to run it then says "an unhandled exception occurred" and quickly aborts and says it "encountered EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION in ntdll.dll (code 3221225477)". It also says that the executable pre.exe aborted with an error message 1073471819.
I thought that it might be because my job is too large so I tried using a coarse mesh and ran the job again. It appeared to be doing more this time as it got past the "run pre.exe" stage and began the "run standard.exe" stage, but then suddenly aborted again without giving me an explanation or error code.

The images below show the error messages in my command prompt window (or PowerShell) in my case. These first 2 are for my original job;

and the third image is for my job with the coarse mesh:

I have also attached the .msg file of the coarse mesh job if that helps.

https://files.engineering.com/getfile.aspx?folder=3086eb73-c03e-4476-b68e-8bb0c85e3588&file=Test.msg

Thanks for your help!

 

[FEA way]

Sometimes such ambiguous error messages are actually caused by modeling issues. In this case the .msg file contains typical message indicating convergence issues: "Too many attempts made for this increment". There are also some warnings regarding numerical singularity/zero pivot in this file. It seems that your model is underconstrained.

 

[JamesPowell]

How do I know how to fix this issue and make my model properly constrained?
Most of the nodes of zero pivot or numerical singularities are in the portion of the steel ED bars which are unbonded to the surrounding concrete. I was unsure of how to have it unbonded so I didn't apply any constraints or interactions here, and simply embedded the remainder of the bars in the concrete. What would be the best way to simulate this?
Sorry I have a lot of questions, I am having to teach myself how to use Abaqus as my project supervisor doesn't know how to use it.

 

[FEA way]

You should either apply embedded region constraint to these bars or fix them with some boundary condition. Otherwise they will be free to move causing rigid body motions and thus numerical singularities.

 

[JamesPowell]

It appears to be running and working properly now, thanks for your help!