Data extraction using Abaqus and Matlab/Excel

**pbruno01** · 2012-07-26, 11:51

Ok, I'm attempting to extract data from multiple runs of heterogeneous models, the problem is I'm trying to extract data for damage energy values and element volume (which are calculated for individual elements), because ideally we'd examine the energy and damage based on the volume of the material for comparisons and determining fracture toughness. We have ALLDMD (damage dissipation energy) data for the entire model, but it's an assembly of smaller parts with different properties, and we'd like to be able to examine the effects of each part.

The problem, is extracting the element by element data for the 20000 elements we have is overloading the computers we're trying to extract the data on. We can't use the computer the simulations were done on, because they were submitted to a server cluster with a much larger processing power.

So, I need a way to extract the data for the elements, Either a way to sum the total the element data in Abaqus, and then extract it for the increments, or a way to extract all the element data, which I can then perform operations on in a separate program.

I know this isn't necessarily the most clear question, but basically, we have too much data for our computer to handle, and need a way to cut it down, while not losing information, any help would be greatly appreciated, and I'll be happy to try to clarify things to make it easier for you to understand what is going on and what I'm trying to do

**IceBreaker** · 2012-07-26, 18:06

Why not write a python script and have it automate the computations you wish to make? You can have the script run your model and carry out the post-processing on the cluster if it turns out to be too computationally intensive for your desktop.

**pbruno01** · 2012-07-27, 08:14

Mostly because I cannot code in python and wouldn't know where to start, do you have any suggestions on where to start, with the program and python in general?

**IceBreaker** · 2012-07-27, 10:10

If you are working with a CAE, there must be a .jnl (journal) file saved in the scratch directory. Now, do the post-processing only once. Then, open the .jnl file it in a text editor (Notepad, Notepad++, Vim, .. ) and scroll down to the end of the file and see if there's something familiar in the Python code in the .jnl file; there should be.

To learn more about scripting, there's no short-cut. Abaqus documentation is a pretty good reference.