Many composite workflows involve composite damage and failure to be accounted for, where the analyst would need to check the number of plies that has failed in the composite layup.
Currently Abaqus/Viewer does not provide this output, and hence, the analyst needs to check ply-by-ply by accessing the section points to conclude how many plies have failed. Sometimes the interest extends to know whether all plies have failed or just some of them. This entire process can be very tedious especially if the composite structure (or laminate) has a large number of plies.
A script has been developed to generate a new field output in the Abaqus/Viewer to show the number of plies failed for each element and the ratio of plies failed, where 0 indicates “no ply has failed” and 1 indicates “all plies have failed”
The script and the files to be read are to be placed in the local/working directory. The script should be executed from the command prompt as shown below:
abaqus python
For example, the command:
abaqus python ply_fail.py -odb new
When the script is run, it prompts the user to input the part name and the element set name of interest.
The output can by visualized for plotting the output variable ply_failed and ply_ratio, which indicates the number of plies failed and the ratio of plies failed respectively. Since it’s an elemental quantity, please use QUILT plot to see the failure in each element.
NOTE: The damage output variables given in the script could be removed / added according to the requirement for triggering failure at the section points
Figure: Field output for the number of plies failed
Figure: Field output for the ratio of plies failed
