Changing material properties in Steps

[pradhanks]

Hi,
I am using Abaqus 6.14-1. I have a assembly of cylinder and rectangle which are assigned Al properties and I have two Steps. The Al properties needs to remain same for the first step and it should change in the second step. I have defined field variable for defining two different materials for this purpose. I want to use variable value 1 for the first step and varaible value 2 for the second step for the cylinder. I am confused how to define this as Initial condition especially node definition and defining value to the node/element and wonder if it is possible to do??? I have seen some posts but i found them confusing and would appreciate if i get any clearer help to this. Any help will be highly appreciated.

 

[tkks2040]

I am not sure if you can change material property from step to step. Do you mind sharing the posts you found regarding this?

 

[Dave442]

you can do this using a field variable. it is explained by mrgoldthorpe in this thread:

http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=259881

 

[pradhanks]

Thanks Dave.. will go through it

 

[Dave442]

You might also be able to do this using temperature-dependent material properties and *TEMPERATURE.