Extracting Nodal Mass 1

[mjankaus]

Good afternoon,

I am a new Abaqus user, and had some questions regarding nodal mass. I am using Abaqus to design a plate (planar shell elements w/ thickness) and extract mode shape data. Ideally, I would like to import all necessary data into Matlab to conduct some simulations. Of the data I need, I have been able to extract geometric data from the .inp file and the mode shape data from a generated report (.rpt file).

I'd also like to extract the nodal mass. Ideally, I am looking for a table including the node number and the nodal mass. I understand this information may be available in the .odb file, but I have not been able to import any data from the .odb into Matlab. Does anyone know how to retrieve this data? Any suggestions are tremendously useful.

Thanks for your help,

Mark

 

[mjankaus]

For anyone interested, I have found a plausible solution to approximating nodal mass.

First, construct and mesh the part. Create a "Static-General" step. For boundary conditions, fix all nodes (Encastre- both rotation and translation). For load conditions, create a gravity field with magnitude 1 for SI units(for my case, I have constructed a planar geometry in the X-Y plane, so my gravity field is in the Z-direction, normal to the geometry). Then under field output requests, select nodal reaction forces. You may then create and submit a job. Once the job has been completed, you are able to generate a field report with the reaction forces by node number. These reaction forces will correspond to nodal mass, which may be useful in analytic vibration analysis.

Hope that helps anyone with a similar problem.

-Mark