Creating a frozen area restriction

You can select regions of your model that will not be modified during a topology or sizing optimization. The regions continue to contribute to variables such as the weight and the inertia of the model. You can freeze regions that are contacting other parts, such as regions that are used to support the model and regions that form bearing surfaces. It is recommended that you freeze regions to which prescribed conditions are applied. You can freeze these regions using a geometric restriction; or you can request that the Optimization module freeze them automatically when you create a topology optimization task, as described in Creating an optimization task. Freezing these regions stabilizes the optimization and often leads to a significantly lower number of iterations.

Related Topics
Creating a geometric restriction in a topology or sizing optimization
Creating a geometric restriction in a shape optimization

  1. From the main menu bar, select Geometric RestrictionCreate. The Create Geometric Restriction dialog box appears.

    Tip: You can initiate the Create procedure in two other ways:

    • Click Create in the Geometric Restriction Manager. (You can display the Geometric Restriction Manager by selecting Geometric RestrictionManager from the main menu bar.)

    • Click the tool in the Optimization module toolbox.

  2. From the Create Geometric Restriction dialog box that appears, enter the name of the geometric restriction.

  3. Select Frozen area or Frozen area (Sizing) from the list of geometric restrictions, and click Continue.

  4. From the viewport, select the regions that will be frozen.

    By default, Abaqus/CAE allows you to select all of the model. To select faces or cells, use the Selection toolbar to change the type of object that you can select to Face or Cells. For more information, see Filtering your selection based on the type of object.

    If you would rather select from a list of existing sets, do the following:

    1. Click Sets on the right side of the prompt area.

      Abaqus/CAE displays the Region Selection dialog box containing a list of available sets.

    2. Select the set of interest, and click Continue.

    Note:

    The default selection method is based on the selection method you most recently employed. To revert to the other method, click Select in Viewport or Sets on the right side of the prompt area.

  5. When you have finished selecting the region to freeze, click Done in the prompt area. For more information on selecting objects, see Selecting objects within the viewport.”

    The Edit Geometric Restriction dialog box appears.

  6. Click OK to freeze the selected regions and to exit the editor.