Abaqus¶

Command-line access¶

To access Abaqus’ command-line interface:

abaqus

Graphical interface¶

The recommended way to start Abaqus’ graphical interface depends on

• which version of Abaqus has been loaded
• whether you are using a (hardware-accelerated) ‘qsh-vis’ session which can greatly improve graphical performance but requires a graphics card, which are typically in demand.

abaqus cae -mesa

abaqus cae

$ABAQUSCOMMAND cae

abq6133 cae

Single-core job¶

In this example, we will run the s4d.inp file on a single core using 8 Gigabytes of memory. After connecting to iceberg (see Establishing a SSH connection), start an interactive sesssion with the qrsh command.

Load version 2017 of Abaqus and fetch the s4d example by running the following commands:

module load apps/abaqus/2017/binary
abaqus fetch job=s4d

Now, you need to write a batch submission file. We assume you’ll call this my_job.sge:

#!/bin/bash
#$ -cwd
#$ -l rmem=8G

module load apps/abaqus/2017/binary

abaqus job=my_job input=s4d.inp scratch=$TMPDIR memory="8gb" interactive

Submit the job with:

qsub my_job.sge

• We have requested 8 gigabytes of memory in the above job. The memory="8gb" switch tells abaqus to use 8 gigabytes. The #$ -l rmem=8G tells the system to reserve 8 gigabytes of real memory. Make sure that the memory= and rmem= values match.
• Note the word interactive at the end of the abaqus command. Your job will not run without it.

Single-core job with user subroutine¶

In this example, we will fetch a simulation from Abaqus’ built in set of problems that makes use of user subroutines (UMATs) and run it in batch on a single core. After connecting to iceberg (see Establishing a SSH connection), start an interactive session with the qrsh command.

Load version 2017 of Abaqus and fetch the umatmst3 example by running the following commands:

module load apps/abaqus/2017/binary
abaqus fetch job=umatmst3*

This will produce two files:

• The input file umatmst3.inp
• the Fortran user subroutine umatmst3.f

Now, you need to write a batch submission file. We assume you’ll call this my_user_job.sge:

#!/bin/bash
#$ -cwd
#$ -l rmem=8G

module load apps/abaqus/2017/binary
module load $ABAQCOMPVER

abaqus job=my_user_job input=umatmst3.inp user=umatmst3.f scratch=$TMPDIR memory="8gb" interactive

Submit the job with:

qsub my_user_job.sge

Important notes:

• In order to use user subroutines, it is necessary to load the module for a particular version of the Intel compiler. The name of the module file for the most appropriate Intel compiler is stored in the ABAQCOMPVER environment variable.
• The user subroutine itself is passed to Abaqus with the switch user=umatmst3.f.
• The notes for the previous single-core batch job example still apply.

Multi-core job (on a single node)¶

To distribute the workload associated with an Abaqus job between say 4 CPU cores on the same worker node we need a batch job submission script my_4_core_job.sge like the following:

#!/bin/bash
#$ -cwd
#$ -l rmem=8G
#$ -pe openmp 4

module load apps/abaqus/2017/binary

abaqus job=my_job input=s4d.inp mp_mode=threads cpus=$NSLOTS scratch=$TMPDIR memory="32gb" interactive

Again, submit the job with:

qsub my_4_core_job.sge

Important notes:

• We specify the number of CPU cores using -pe openmp 4 near the top of the script. We tell Abaqus to distribute the work using cpus=$NSLOTS where NSLOTS is a variable automatically set by the job scheduler to be the same as the number at the end of the -pe openmp line.
• Here we request a job with 8GB of real memory per CPU core (-l rmem=8G) but Abaqus itself needs to be told the total amount of memory available (memory="32gb")
• The notes for the previous single-core batch job example still apply.