Development of ABAQUS UEL/VUEL subroutines for scaled boundary finite element method for general static and dynamic stress analyses

Abstract

User-defined element subroutines (UEL and VUEL) in Fortran are developed in ABAQUS, to implement the Scaled Boundary Finite Element Method (SBFEM), for general static and elastodynamic stress analyses of solids. The purposes are twofold: to increase the ease-of-use and acceptability of this relatively new numerical method; and to combine advantages of both the SBFEM and ABAQUS, namely, the former's semi-analytical solutions and flexibility in domain discretization, and the latter's powerful linear and nonlinear solvers and pre/post-processing modules, for modelling complicated problems with higher accuracy and fewer degrees of freedom than the traditional FEM. Using the developed UEL and VUEL, a few 2D and 3D problems, including homogeneous solids with and without cracks, composites with inclusions of random shapes, XCT-image converted concrete mesoscale models, are simulated. The results are compared favourably with FEM simulations in terms of accuracy and degrees of freedom.