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Material Damping in Abaqus

material damping of abaqus damping

What is damping?

Damping is an influence within or upon a dynamic system that has the effect of reducing, restricting or preventing its movements. In physical systems, damping is produced by processes that dissipate energy.

What is the benefit of using damping in physical systems?

There are two main reasons for adding damping to a model: to limit numerical oscillations or to add physical damping to the system. Damping is also beneficial when modeling high-speed phenomena and noisy dynamics.

What are the Sources of Damping?

Generally, Damping results from several sources, such as inelastic dissipation (Material nonlinearity), material behavior (Internal friction), and joint behavior (External friction).

How can we model damping in Abaqus?

There are two primary aspects for defining damping available in Abaqus. The most widely used damping form is called viscous damping, in which the damping force is velocity-proportional. Sometimes the damping force is Displacement-proportional such as the friction at the supports. This damping form is called Structural damping (imaginary stiffness).

What is the damping definition sources in Abaqus?

In general, Abaqus has five categories of damping definition sources: Material damping, Element damping (spring elements, dashpot elements, and connector elements), Global damping (constant damping coefficient), Modal damping (in mode-based linear dynamic analyses), and Artificial damping (numerical damping).

What are the forms of Material Damping in Abaqus?

There are three options to provide material damping in Abaqus. The viscoelasticity model is useful for materials in which dissipative losses are primarily caused by viscous (internal damping) effects. Rayleigh damping (Viscous damping) is used to introduce general damping in models without dissipation sources (an example is a linear system with chattering contact, such as a pipeline in a seismic event). Another option is to use structural damping. The damping forces due to structural damping are intended to represent frictional effects (as distinct from viscous effects).

What is damping?

Damping is an influence within or upon a dynamic system that has the effect of reducing, restricting or preventing its movements. In physical systems, damping is produced by processes that dissipate energy. Damping forces come from several sources simultaneously, such as energy loss during hysteretic loading, viscoelastic material properties, contact friction and so on. Material damping is a kind of Abaqus damping method; keep going reading this useful article to get more information about material damping.

You can find a great blog about the concept and basic understanding here:

http://feaforall.com/what-is-damping-and-why-is-it-useful/

material damping

(Source: evolution.skf.com/damping-in-a-rolling-bearing-arrangement/)

material damping

Sources of Damping

Generally, we can have damping resulting from:

1. Material nonlinearity  inelastic dissipation

2. Internal friction material behavior

3. External friction joint behavior

Why do we use damping in Abaqus?

We take the profit of damping in Abaqus to accurately models the energy loss in a dynamic system. Damping is also beneficial when modeling very fast phenomena and noisy dynamics. It will play a critical role to have a meaningful solution.

So, there are two main reasons for adding damping to a model: to limit numerical oscillations or to add physical damping to the system.

How we can model damping in Abaqus?

The most widely used damping form called viscous damping, in which the damping force is velocity proportional. In fact, the complex damping may be proportional to the square of velocity, such as the damping force of solid motion in liquid, and sometimes it even has nothing to do with speed, such as the friction at the supports.

Two primary aspects for defining damping are available in Abaqus:

* Velocity-proportional

Viscous damping

** Displacement-proportional

Structural damping (imaginary stiffness), is used in frequency domain dynamics and in mode-based transient dynamics.

How we can enter data for damping in Abaqus?

In general, Abaqus has five categories of damping definition sources:

1. Material damping

You specify damping when defining material. When a structure is subjected to oscillatory deformations, its state is represented by a mix of kinetic and potential energy. Some of this energy is lost per deformation cycles in real structures, which is known as material damping.

2. Element damping

Includes contributions from complex spring elements, dashpot elements and connector elements (using connector damping)

element damping | abaqus damping 3. Global damping

Assumes the damping coefficient is constant in all materials. It is essentially a crude approximation to improve performance (preliminary design).

4. Modal damping

Applies only to mode-based linear dynamic analyses, so it can only be used in Abaqus/Standard.

5. Artificial damping

Damping associated with the time integration method (numerical damping).

Here, we only focus on material damping in Abaqus. Other types will discuss later in future articles.

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material damping

Material Damping in Abaqus

In most cases, the material model itself may provide damping in the form of plastic dissipation or viscoelasticity. For many applications such damping may be adequate. Another option is to use Rayleigh damping or structural damping.

In Abaqus, material damping can be defined for both direct-integration (nonlinear, implicit or explicit) and mode-based (linear) dynamic analyses.

Forms of Material Damping

Rayleigh damping (Viscous damping)

Structural damping

Viscoelasticity (for viscoelastic materials)

Rayleigh damping

Some models do not have any dissipation sources (an example is a linear system with chattering contact, such as a pipeline in a seismic event). In such cases, it is often desirable to introduce some general damping. Abaqus provides Rayleigh damping for this purpose. It provides a convenient abstraction to damp lower (mass-dependent) and higher (stiffness-dependent) frequency range behavior. (material damping)

In Rayleigh model, damping is linearly proportional to mass M and stiffness K matrices. A damping matrix C is added to the system. We define C as:

material damping

C matrices are generated for each material in the model. We define the Rayleigh damping factors (alpha, beta) as material properties in Abaqus:

Material damping | Abaqus dampingSupposing that only Rayleigh damping is present in the model and all the materials use identical Rayleigh damping factors, we can find a relation between the effective system damping ratio and the Rayleigh damping parameters. According to the orthogonality between mass matrix and stiffness matrix, for each natural frequency of the system ωi, the effective damping ratio is equal to:

material dampingReminder. Damping Ratio………………………………………………………………………………………………..
The fraction of critical damping or damping ratio is defined as:

material dampingAnd natural frequency is:

material dampingWhere c, k and m are damping, stiffness and mass of each mode, respectively.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Thus, mass proportional damping dominates when the frequency is low, and stiffness proportional damping dominates when the frequency is high:

material damping | Abaqus damping

Structural Damping (Abaqus/Standard)

Assumes that the damping forces are proportional to the forces caused by stressing of the structure and are opposed to the velocity:

material dampingWhere F and I are the damping force and the forces caused by stressing of the structure for every DOF, respectively. User provide the s value when defining material in Abaqus/CAE:

material dampingDamping in real structures is frequency dependent. Therfore, this is best suited for frequency domain dynamic procedures.

The damping forces due to structural damping are intended to represent frictional effects (as distinct from viscous effects). Thus, structural damping is suggested for models involving materials that exhibit frictional behavior (hysteretic damping) or where local frictional effects are present throughout the model, such as dry rubbing of joints in a multi-link structure.

Abaqus damping | Abaqus material damping joint 

Viscoelasticity

Viscoelasticity is the property of materials that exhibit both viscous and elastic characteristics when undergoing deformation. The term viscous implies that they deform slowly when exposed to an external force. They cannot return to their first configuration. It is due to dissipation of energy. Elastic materials strain when stretched and immediately return to their original state once the stress is removed. Viscoelastic materials have elements of both of these properties:

Abaqus damping | Abaqus material dampingViscoelasticity model in Abaqus is useful for materials in which dissipative losses primarily caused by viscous (internal damping) effects. The model must be combined with an elastic material model. Viscoelasticity cannot be combined with any of the plasticity models.

material damping

Defining viscoelasticity in Abaqus

In Abaqus, the viscoelasticity can be defined as:

* Time domain viscoelasticity

Viscoelasticity is a function of time for transient analysis. It describes isotropic rate-dependent material behavior. We can use a Prony series formulation to enter data:

Material damping | Abaqus damping

** Frequency domain viscoelasticity

Viscoelasticity is a function of frequency for steady-state small-vibration analyses. This analysis is limited to Abaqus/Standard.

For example, many applications of elastomers involve dynamic loading in the form of steady-state vibration, and often in such cases, the dissipative losses in the material must be modeled to obtain useful results.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article about material damping in the Abaqus damping method. If you want to start learning ABAQUS for the first time, it would be useful to watch the below demo of the “Abaqus for beginners” tutorial package and check the best training resources on the Abaqus tutorial.


2 thoughts on “Material Damping in Abaqus

  1. Avatar of Angel Andros Angel Andros says:

    Really thank you! Want more.

  2. Avatar of 720p 720p says:

    Very interesting information!Perfect just what I was searching for! Filia Kendrick Teriann

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