Invoking Toolpath-mesh intersection module for AM simulations in Abaqus 1

[scooke]

Hello,

I am doing an AM simulation in ABAQUS 2019 and went through the documentation for the AM plug in.

Currently, I have a working DFLUX and UEPACTIVATIONVOL subroutine which read in data I pre-processed in python based on a desired tool path from the G-code.

I have two questions:

1) Do I need to use UMDFLUX in place of the DFLUX subroutine for better compatibility? I find it much more confusing writing a UMDFLUX subroutine than DFLUX since the parameters and passed variables are all changed. My current DFLUX code reads in positional data from a CSV file and assigns COORDS() values to move the laser but I am not sure how I would do this with UMDFLUX. Does anyone have experience with this subroutine?

2) I need to invoke the toolpath-mesh intersection module and from my understanding I need to use UEPActivationSetup and UMDFluxSetup to invoke this module. Is this necessary or can my UEPActivationVol subroutine invoke the toolpath-mesh without it? If you do need these, do you just define which elements are going to be part of the activation sequence?

Thanks for your time in reading this, I appreciate any help or advice anyone has!


Shaun

 

[FEA way]

Abaqus offers implemented subroutines for selected AM processes (powder bed, FDM and LDED). These features are described in the "Special-purpose techniques for additive-manufacturing" chapter of the documentation. In these cases there’s no need to write your own subroutines.

However if your AM process is of different type then custom subroutines will be needed. You can use DFlux but UMDFluxSetup is utilized to provide information for toolpath-mesh intersection module in order to simulate laser heating. This module is also used to simulate material deposition and for this part it takes information from UEPActivationSetup. UEPActivationVol And UEPActivationFacet.

There’s a nice scheme in the "Activating and using the toolpath-mesh intersection module" documentation chapter that shows the workflow of AM process simulation including data exchange (both input and output) with toolpath-mesh intersection module.

 

[scooke]

Thanks again for your quick replies.

The scheme is very helpful but I am not sure if I actually need to write UMDFluxSetup and UEPActivationSetup or if they just pass information already known by Abaqus. What exactly do I need to define in those subroutines?

I would like to write the UMDFLUX subroutine as I want to control all the inputs rather than using a more black box approach. The system I am modelling is also quite unique so I would like to have some customization.

Do you know how to write a UMDFLUX subroutine? I am confused on csiStart and csiEnd which are the isoparametric coordinates for starting and ending points of laser at each time increment. Do I need to manually convert all my cartesion data to isoparametric and then set csiStart and csiEnd?

Thanks!

 

[Matthew_19]

@scooke

Would you be able to assist with how you managed to get your DFLUX code to read positional data from a CSV file and assign COORDS to move the laser?