We are suffering from the same problem. I have been trying to impose an initial strain disribution in abaqus in my model. But as far as i undestand this cannot be done. Only initial stresses can be imposed by the following key.
Apologies for this exasperated-sounding post, but I think I'm falling down here.
I have lost count of the number of times this question has been asked (and answered). If you have the strain field you have (or can get) the stress field, yes? If you have the stress field, have you searched for this topic on this/other forum/a? Or even better, looked at the last couple of posts for example...
-I DID try SIGINI , but imposing the stress (at a given time) will not give you the same plastic strain from a longer loading history.
However in my case , SIGINI almost generates no strain at all.
Also sometime you have to modify the boundary conditions otherwise you might end up with the imposed stress field being eliminated by the balacing stresses introduced by Abaqus to establish the equilibrium at the end of the first step (or increment depending on UNBALANCED STRESS=RAMP or STEP you set in INITIAL CONDITIONS)
