Plasticity and movement

[blckwtr]

I am fairly new to abaqus, since I haven't used it in years, and not concidered an advanced user. We have however experienced a challenge with one of our tools. It is a lifting appliance forr pipes, and uses equally distributed slips on the perimeter which radially grips on the inside diameter of the pipe, so that the slips initially indent the pipe with peaks protruding on the slips itself. Then we apply axial loading on the tool, but the radial foces are increased, since the wedges are supported by an angle bracket... So how do I proceed to do the analysis, in short descriptive steps...

 

[csk62]

Do you have stress/strain data for the material you are analyzing?
That would be a logical first step in the analysis for the material input file.