Hi,
I have a question regarding local, material-level convergence tolerances in Abaqus and Plaxis. I have experience using Abaqus but not much familiar with Plaxis.
As shown in the attached image, Abaqus does not allow even a single integration point to exceed its material-level convergence tolerance. So, if you have a million integration points, and the global equilibrium is established, but you have only a single integration point with an unconverged local/material state, the increment is considered failed by Abaqus and the increment is cut back. More importantly, my understanding is that this criteria cannot be relaxed by the user since the *Controls command in Abaqus only relaxes the global convergence tolerances.
In stark contrast, as shown in the image, PLAXIS manual appears to be suggesting the almost 10% of the integration points could have ‘inaccurate’ material-level calculations as long as the global equilibrium is established! Compared to Abaqus, this would make the analysis much more easier to converge and complete.
I would appreciate it if anyone can comment and provide recommendation for relaxing the local convergence tolerances in Abaqus. (again, the *Controls command in Abaqus only relaxes the global convergence tolerances - not the local, material-level tolerances).
Please note that I'm not a fan of relaxing tolerances at all. However, in some very complicated soil-structure interaction models, this issue persists even if the modelling is done with a very high quality. And I believe that's why Plaxis has a more relaxed local convergence criteria. So, my question is specifically about relaxing local convergence tolerance - otherwise I'm aware that all other avenues shall first be exhausted before relaxing the tolerances.
Thanks in advance.
