Skip to content

Abaqus

The Abaqus Unified FEA product suite offers powerful and complete solutions for both routine and sophisticated engineering problems covering a vast spectrum of industrial applications. In the automotive industry engineering work groups are able to consider full vehicle loads, dynamic vibration, multibody systems, impact/crash, nonlinear static, thermal coupling, and acoustic-structural coupling using a common model data structure and integrated solver technology. Best-in-class companies are taking advantage of Abaqus Unified FEA to consolidate their processes and tools, reduce costs and inefficiencies, and gain a competitive advantage

Available versions of Abaqus in ULHPC

To check available versions of Abaqus at ULHPC, type module spider abaqus. It will list the available versions with the following format: 

cae/ABAQUS/<version>[-hotfix-<hotfix>]

Don't forget to unset SLURM_GTIDS

You MUST unset the SLURM environment variable SLURM_GTIDS for both interactive/GUI and batch jobs 

unset SLURM_GTIDS
Failure to do so will cause Abaqus to get stuck due to the MPI that Abaqus ships witch is not supporting the SLURM scheduler.

When using a general compute node for Abaqus 2021, please run:

  • abaqus cae -mesa to launch the GUI without support for hardware-accelerated graphics rendering.
    • the option -mesa disables hardware-accelerated graphics rendering within Abaqus’s GUI.
  • For a Non-Graphical execution, use 
    abaqus job=<my_job_name> input=<filename>.inp mp_mode=<mode> cpus=<cores> [gpus=<gpus>] scratch=$SCRATCH memory="<mem>gb"

Supported parallel mode

Abaqus has two parallelization options which are mutually exclusive:

  • MPI (mp_mode=mpi), which is generally preferred since this allows for scaling the job to multiple compute nodes. As for MPI jobs, use -N <nodes> --ntasks-per-node <cores> -c1 upon submission to use:

     abaqus mp_mode=mpi cpu=$SLURM_NTASKS [...]

  • Shared memory / Threads (mp_mode=threads) for single node / multi-threaded executions. Typically use -N1 --ntasks-per-node 1 -c <threads> upon submission to use:

    abaqus mp_mode=threads cpus=${SLURM_CPUS_PER_TASK} [...]

  • Shared memory for single node with GPU(s) / multi-threaded executions (mp_mode=threads). Typically use -N1 -G 1 --ntasks-per-node 1 -c <threads> upon submission on a GPU node to use:

    abaqus mp_mode=threads cpus=${SLURM_CPUS_PER_TASK} gpus=${SLURM_GPUS} [...]

Abaqus example problems

Abaqus contains a large number of example problems which can be used to become familiar with Abaqus on the system. These example problems are described in the Abaqus documentation and can be obtained using the abaqus fetch jobs=<name> command.

For example, after loading the Abaqus module cae/ABAQUS, enter the following at the command line to extract the input file for test problem s4d: 

abaqus fetch job=s4d
This will extract the input file s4d.inp See also Abaqus performance data.

Interactive mode

To open an Abaqus in the interactive mode, please follow the following steps:

(eventually) connect to the ULHPC login node with the -X (or -Y) option:

ssh -X iris-cluster   # OR on Mac OS: ssh -Y iris-cluster

ssh -X aion-cluster   # OR on Mac OS: ssh -Y aion-cluster

Then you can reserve an interactive job, for instance with 8 MPI processes. Don't forget to use the --x11 option if you intend to use the GUI.

$ si --x11 -c 8               # Abaqus mp_mode=threads test
# OR
$ si --x11 --ntask-per-node 8 # abaqus mp_mode=mpi test

# Load the module ABAQUS and needed environment
(node)$ module purge
(node)$ module load cae/ABAQUS
(node)$ unset SLURM_GTIDS   # MANDATORY

# /!\ IMPORTANT: You MUST ADAPT the LM_LICENSE_FILE variable to point to YOUR licence server!!!
(node)$ export LM_LICENSE_FILE=xyz

# Check License server token available
(node)$ abaqus licensing lmstat -a
abaqus licensing lmstat -a
lmutil - Copyright (c) 1989-2019 Flexera. All Rights Reserved.
Flexible License Manager status on Wed 4/13/2022 22:39
[...]

Non-graphical Abaqus

Then the general format to run your Non-Graphical multithreaded interactive execution:

Assuming a job submitted with {sbatch|srun|si...} -N1 -c <threads>: 

# /!\ ADAPT $INPUTFILE accordingly
abaqus job="${SLURM_JOB_NAME}" verbose=2 interactive \
    input=${INPUTFILE} \
    cpus=${SLURM_CPUS_PER_TASK} mp_mode=threads

Assuming a job submitted with {sbatch|srun|si...} -N <N> --ntasks-per-node <npn> -c 1: 

# /!\ ADAPT $INPUTFILE accordingly
abaqus job="${SLURM_JOB_NAME}" verbose=2 interactive \
    input=${INPUTFILE} \
    cpus=${SLURM_NTASKS} mp_mode=mpi

GUI

If you want to run the GUI, use: abaqus cae -mesa

License information

Assuming you have set the variable LM_LICENSE_FILE to point to YOUR licence server, you can check the available license and group you belongs to with: 

abaqus licensing lmstat -a
If your server is hosted outside the ULHPC network, you will have to contact the HPC team to adapt the network firewalls to allow the connection towards your license server.

Use the following options for simulation to stop and resume it: 

# /!\ ADAPT <jobname> accordingly:
abaqus job=<jobname> suspend
abaqus job=<jobname> resume

Batch mode

#!/bin/bash -l                # <--- DO NOT FORGET '-l'
#SBATCH -J <jobname>
#SBATCH -N 1
#SBATCH --ntasks-per-node=1
#SBATCH -c 4                  # /!\ ADAPT accordingly
#SBATCH --time=0-03:00:00
#SBATCH -p batch

print_error_and_exit() { echo "***ERROR*** $*"; exit 1; }
module purge || print_error_and_exit "No 'module' command"
module load cae/ABAQUS
# export LM_LICENSE_FILE=[...]
unset SLURM_GTIDS

INPUTFILE=s4d.inp
[ ! -f "${INPUTFILE}" ] && print_error_and_exit "Unable to find input file ${INPUTFILE}"

abaqus job="${SLURM_JOB_NAME}" verbose=2 interactive \
    input=${INPUTFILE} cpus=${SLURM_CPUS_PER_TASK} mp_mode=threads

#!/bin/bash -l                # <--- DO NOT FORGET '-l'
#SBATCH -J <jobname>
#SBATCH -N 2
#SBATCH --ntasks-per-node=8  # /!\ ADAPT accordingly
#SBATCH -c 1
#SBATCH --time=0-03:00:00
#SBATCH -p batch

print_error_and_exit() { echo "***ERROR*** $*"; exit 1; }
module purge || print_error_and_exit "No 'module' command"
module load cae/ABAQUS
# export LM_LICENSE_FILE=[...]
unset SLURM_GTIDS

INPUTFILE=s4d.inp
[ ! -f "${INPUTFILE}" ] && print_error_and_exit "Unable to find input file ${INPUTFILE}"

abaqus job="${SLURM_JOB_NAME}" verbose=2 interactive \
    input=${INPUTFILE} cpus=${SLURM_NTASKS} mp_mode=mpi

May not be supported depending on the software set 

#!/bin/bash -l                # <--- DO NOT FORGET '-l'
#SBATCH -J <jobname>
#SBATCH -N 1
#SBATCH --ntasks-per-node=1
#SBATCH -c 7
#SBATCH -G 1
#SBATCH --time=0-03:00:00
#SBATCH -p gpu

print_error_and_exit() { echo "***ERROR*** $*"; exit 1; }
module purge || print_error_and_exit "No 'module' command"
module load cae/ABAQUS
# export LM_LICENSE_FILE=[...]
unset SLURM_GTIDS

INPUTFILE=s4d.inp
[ ! -f "${INPUTFILE}" ] && print_error_and_exit "Unable to find input file ${INPUTFILE}"

abaqus job="${SLURM_JOB_NAME}" verbose=2 interactive \
    input=${INPUTFILE} cpus=${SLURM_CPUS_PER_TASK} gpus=${SLURM_GPUS} mp_mode=threads

Additional information

To know more about Abaqus documentation and tutorial, please refer Abaqus CAE

Tutorial

Tip

If you find some issues with the instructions above, please file a support ticket.

Last update: April 19, 2024