Abaqus thermal expansion and damping material definitions add dissipative, thermally induced, field-induced, and viscous effects to otherwise mechanical material behavior.
How It Works
Material damping includes Rayleigh damping for direct-integration, steady-state, subspace-based, and mode-based dynamic analyses. The mass-proportional factor damps low-frequency motion through a mass contribution, while the stiffness-proportional factor is interpreted as viscous material damping tied to elastic stiffness and strain rate.
Thermal expansion defines thermal strain from temperature change and reference temperature. Field expansion follows the same pattern but uses user-defined field variables rather than temperature. Both can be isotropic, orthotropic, or anisotropic, and both can be tied to initial temperature or field-variable values. The guide also covers viscosity definitions for Newtonian and non-Newtonian shear behavior.
Why It Matters
These material definitions connect structural response to dynamic dissipation and environmental fields. They are often small compared to primary stiffness or plasticity, but they can dominate thermal stress, modal damping, explicit stability, and coupled-field accuracy.