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Direct Cyclic Procedure

L3.2

Direct Cyclic Procedure

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Overview
Direct cyclic analysis is a cost-effective
technique for predicting the low-cycle fatigue
life of an elastic-plastic structure subjected
to cyclic thermo-mechanical loading.
It can be used to predict the likelihood of
plastic shakedown as well as plastic
ratcheting in the structure.
It can be also used to model low-cycle
fatigue in ductile metals (discussed in
Lecture 5).
Example: A hot component in the
automotive industry such as a cylinder head
subjected to cyclic temperature fluctuations
and clamping loads.

Metal Inelasticity in Abaqus

L3.3

Direct Cyclic Procedure

Motivation

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The classical approach to obtaining a stabilized state is to apply multiple

loading cycles to the structure until the cycle stabilizes.
This can be very expensive as it may take many loading cycles
before the response stabilizes.
Difficult to determine when all material points have stabilized since
they may not all stabilize simultaneously.

50-60 cycles

Metal Inelasticity in Abaqus

L3.4

Direct Cyclic Procedure

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The direct cyclic analysis procedure avoids considerable numerical

expense associated with a transient analysis.
It uses a modified Newton method in conjunction with Fourier
representations of the displacement solution variables and righthand-side vectors to obtain the stabilized cyclic response directly.

Metal Inelasticity in Abaqus

L3.5

Direct Cyclic Procedure

User interface
Direct cyclic procedure with
fixed time incrementation:
*DIRECT CYCLIC
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Direct cyclic procedure with

automatic time incrementation:
*DIRECT CYCLIC,
CETOL=tolerance, DELTMX=Dq

Direct cyclic procedure with time

points directly specified by the user:
*DIRECT CYCLIC
*TIME POINTS

The last two options can be

combined to use automatic time
incrementation between fixed time
points.

Metal Inelasticity in Abaqus

L3.6

Direct Cyclic Procedure

Defining the direct cyclic procedure

T: time of a single loading cycle

Dtmin: minimum time increment allowed
Dtmax: maximum time increment allowed

controls the
incrementation

Dt0: initial time increment

controls the Fourier

series representations

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*DIRECT CYCLIC, [CETOL=tolerance, DELTMX=Dqmax]

Dt0, T, Dtmin, Dtmax, n0, nmax, Dn, imax

n0: initial number of terms

in the Fourier series
nmax: maximum number of terms
in the Fourier series
Dn: increment in number of terms
in the Fourier series
imax: maximum number of iterations
allowed in a step

controls the iteration

Metal Inelasticity in Abaqus

L3.7

Direct Cyclic Procedure

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The number of Fourier terms can be adapted automatically from iteration

to iteration

Metal Inelasticity in Abaqus

L3.8

Direct Cyclic Procedure

Multiple direct cyclic steps can be included in a single analysis. A direct
cyclic procedure can follow a general step or another direct cyclic step.

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*STEP
*DIRECT CYCLIC
*END STEP
*STEP
*DIRECT CYCLIC
*END STEP

or
*STEP
*STATIC
*END STEP
*STEP
*DIRECT CYCLIC
*END STEP

Metal Inelasticity in Abaqus

L3.9

Direct Cyclic Procedure

You can restart a direct cyclic step from a general step or another direct
cyclic step.

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*RESTART, READ, STEP=, ITERATION=, ENDSTEP, WRITE, FREQ=

*DIRECT CYCLIC, CONTINUE=YES (NO)

The maximum number of Fourier terms can be increased upon

restart.
Contact conditions in a direct cyclic step are fixed.
Abaqus/Viewer supports visualization of field and history output
generated from the direct cyclic procedure.
The element output includes stress; strain; energies; and the
values of state, field, and user-defined variables.
The nodal output variable includes displacements, reaction forces,
and current coordinates

Metal Inelasticity in Abaqus

L3.10

Direct Cyclic Procedure

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Post-analysis output of a direct cyclic step can be obtained to recover

additional results for iterations rather than the final stabilized iteration.
The following example creates a new output database ( .odb) file,
which contains stress and strain of the elements in the element set
ELIST from each increment in iterations 5 and 10 of Step1.
*POST OUTPUT, STEP=1, ITERATION=5
*OUTPUT, HISTORY
*ELEMENT OUTPUT=ELSET=ELIST
S,E
*POST OUTPUT, STEP=1, ITERATION=10
*OUTPUT, HISTORY
*ELEMENT OUTPUT=ELSET=ELIST
S,E

Metal Inelasticity in Abaqus

L3.11

Direct Cyclic Procedure

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Use *CONTROLS, TYPE=DIRECT CYCLIC to set non-default

parameters that will be used to control the stabilized state and plastic
ratcheting detections, and to specify when to impose the periodicity
condition.

Metal Inelasticity in Abaqus

L3.12

Direct Cyclic Procedure

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Prescribed boundary conditions must have an amplitude definition that is

cyclic over the step: the start value must be equal to the end value.
Prescribed loads *CLOAD or *DLOAD must have an amplitude definition
that is cyclic over the step where the start value must be equal to the
end value.
Prescribed predefined fields/temperatures must be cyclic over the step:
the start value must be equal to the end value (use *AMPLITUDE).
If the temperatures are read from the results file, use the BTRAMP
parameter on the *TEMPERATURE option to ramp the
temperatures back to their initial condition values.
It may take a long time for the
structure to cool down;
simulating the cool down may
not add much value to the
analysis; thus, increase the
cool down rate artificially.

Metal Inelasticity in Abaqus

L3.13

Direct Cyclic Procedure

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Results and performance: CPU time (seconds) for the cylinder head
with 80,000 Dofs

Decomposition

Direct Cyclic (31 terms;

200 x 120 Increments)

Classical Approach
(60 x 120 Increments)

51 (performed once; subsequent passes

38

through solver only involve backsubstitution)

Backsubstitution

15

Total (excl. output)

4.3E5

direct cyclic

classical

6.3E5

The area enclosed is

more important than the
curves themselves;
there is some
arbitrariness in where
the stabilized cycle is.

Metal Inelasticity in Abaqus

L3.14

Direct Cyclic Procedure

Summary
The direct-cyclic procedure:

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is a quasi-static analysis;
can be the only step, can follow a general or linear perturbation
step, or can be followed by a general or linear perturbation step;
is ideally suited for very large problems in which many load cycles
must be applied to obtain the stabilized response if transient
analysis is performed;
avoids the considerable numerical expense associated with a
transient analysis;
assumes geometrically linear behavior and fixed contact conditions;
uses the elastic stiffness at the beginning of the analysis as the
Jacobian, so that the equation system is inverted only once.

Metal Inelasticity in Abaqus