I have spent the last few years on-site at various customer sites. Most of this time has been spent debugging large nonlinear models under lots of time pressure.

To help me with my work at these sites, I developed and circulated a checklist that helped users build more robust Abaqus models. This checklist also helped Abaqus users debug convergence and other common modeling and analysis problems. The checklist also emphasized good safeguards to follow to prevent the misuse of powerful techniques that aided convergence and ensure the integrity of the results.   

A copy of the checklist is attached and the issues it discusses should be appropriate for the Abaqus V6.11 & V6.12 releases.

I will periodically repost this checklist as I update and expand it for future releases.

Please let me know of any suggestions or corrections.

It is of course provided with no guarantees or warranties but I do hope that it is helpful!

Also attached is a suite of simple somewhat open ended test problems. Working through these problems should be helpful to the novice user in mastering some of the concepts discussed in the checklist. Please contact me with suggestions for additional test problems, it will be much appreciated. One use of these test problems is for users to self-train and learn during the lull between projects. All the test problems can be easily done using the Student Edition of Abaqus.   

Thanks,

Prashant