External Physical Property Files

An external physical property definition is also supported. This allows ABAQUS property data cards to be drawn directly from a named file in a directory specified by the resource *.physical.directory (see section 1.4).

This type of property data is accessed via the 'EXTERNAL' property type with the name of the file supplied as the property name. The physical property name in the file MUST be '12345678' and this field is filled in by the program with the current physical property set name 'PHY*****'. For example, the following command should be used to access file lamina1:

PROPERTY PHYSICAL EXTERNAL LAMINA1 1

The interface program will test for both 'lamina1' and 'LAMINA1' on unix systems, the integer 1 at the end of the command must be included but is not used. A valid physical property file lamina1 might contain the following data:

*SHELL SECTION, COMPOSITE, ELSET=12345678
0.915, 3, MOUTER, OUTL
1.470, 3, MINNER, INL
0.915, 3, MOUTER, OUTL

This file might usefully be complimented by two external material property files in order to define composite lay-ups:

*MATERIAL, NAME=MOUTER
*DENSITY
765E-9, 
*ELASTIC
10981.2, 0.3176
**
*ORIENTATION, NAME=OUTL, SYSTEM=RECTANGULAR
1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0

*MATERIAL, NAME=MINNER
*DENSITY
765E-9, 
*ELASTIC, TYPE=LAMINA
40075, 11003, 0.079, 5570.6, 5570.6, 4000.0
**
*ORIENTATION, NAME=INL, SYSTEM=RECTANGULAR
1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0