Using substructures

Substructures:

  • allow a collection of elements to be grouped together and all but the retained degrees of freedom eliminated on the basis of linear response within the group;

  • are used in the same manner as any of the standard element types in the Abaqus element library once created as described in Generating substructures;

  • can be used in stress/displacement and in coupled acoustic-structural analyses;

  • have linear response but allow for large translations and large rotations;

  • are particularly useful in cases where identical pieces appear several times in a structure (such as the teeth of a gear) since a single substructure can be used repeatedly;

  • can be translated, rotated with respect to the global system, and reflected in a plane when they are used;

  • are connected to the rest of the model by the retained degrees of freedom at the retained nodes;

  • may contain a set of internal load cases and boundary conditions that can be activated and scaled;

  • can include dynamic effects by including retained eigenmodes; and

  • appear to the rest of the model as a stiffness, optional mass, damping, and a set of scalable load vectors.

The following topics are discussed:

Related Topics
Generating substructures
In Other Guides
*SLOAD
*SUBSTRUCTURE PATH
*SUBSTRUCTURE PROPERTY
*SUBSTRUCTURE DAMPING
*SUBSTRUCTURE DAMPING CONTROLS
*SUBSTRUCTURE MODAL DAMPING

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