Creating a Buckyball In Abaqus

[tomf05]

Hi Guys,

For my fourth year project I am trying to create a Buckyball, otherwise known as a C60 element in Abaqus. I have modelled the structure in Solidworks but unfortunately do not have the licence available to create enough nodes to analyse this in Abaqus. I am fairly new to the software but am attempting to model it as 60 nodes connected by beam elements.

From my research on spaceframe modelling it always seems datum planes have to be created to allow you to sketch the shape but I seem to have managed to create the geometry by simply creating the 60 nodes as datum points using their given coordinates, joining them with wires and then giving the wires a profile and section. Is this approach not feasible in the long run? Is there a different way to go about creating the geometry. Im not interesting in molecular forces, it is solely a structural problem.

Any help or advice would be much appreciated.

 

[MechIrl]

Your approach seems fine to me. I use wire constructions like that all the time without using the sketcher/datum planes. Sometimes the sketcher and extrusion tools just isn't flexible enough for making complex shapes. If the structure is taking a long time for you to make you could use scripting and/or something like pyFormex.

 

[tomf05]

Thanks very much for your help, I am not very experience with Abaqus and have no knowledge of Python which is why i am being slightly tentative. But I saw a video using some wires and some sketches on planes so I thought why not use all wires. The assembly is actually relatively quick as I have the coordinates of the nodes, but will definitely bear something like that in mind. Would you be able to tell me how I find the inp file for my model?

Thanks again for the help

 

[burningDiesel]

In attachment, find the input file of what you want.
I made this using pyFormex in about 5 minutes.
The basic pyformex script is attached. If you have Linux, I suggest you install it and check it out.
To make the model I c/p the coordinates from a website, and connected the nearest points.

 

[burningDiesel]

Inp file got lost somehow

 

[tomf05]

Thank you sdebock very kind of you. Looks the same as the model i created, I assume it will use wire connections too then? I will try and install it on one of the Uni computers as I don't have linux myself. Seems like a good thing to research and add in to my project.

 

[burningDiesel]

Wire connections is some mumbo jumbo from CAE. They are just linear line-2 connections (point to point). I've made them B31 beams, but you could as well use truss or frame elements.