Abaqus-Excite Workflow in Automotive Powertrain Analysis

The AVL Excite and Abaqus combined workflow is commonly used in the automotive powertrain analysis community for engine design and for NVH or durability analysis of engines and power units. Simulation in AVL Excite is based on the idea of dividing the nonlinear mechanical system into linear elastic subsystems with nonlinearities occurring at the connections between the subsystems (nonlinear preloads within subsystems can be accounted for in the Abaqus substructures). Therefore, in the simulation model, linear elastic bodies interact (e.g., engine block vibrations and crankshaft rotational global motion) through highly nonlinear connections (e.g., oil film in the slider bearings, or at inner liner wall for piston-liner contact). This enables the simulation of complex structures such as entire power units with good computational efficiency valid in a frequency range up to 3-5 kHz. Because of the nonlinearities, the calculation is performed in the time domain. An effective time integration procedure with adjusted step size is provided. The results can be subsequently transformed into the frequency domain. What is the Abaqus-Excite workflow? AVL Excite Power Unit permits the use of flexible bodies for the analysis of power unit NVH, engine component durability, and advanced bearings. The tasks for the Abaqus-Excite workflow can be briefly described as follows: 1. Abaqus is used to generate substructures (or linear elastic bodies) for the engine block, crankshaft, conrod, etc. The Abaqus substructure SIM file contains the table of DOFs, geometry, condensed mass, damping, and stiffness matrices, recovery matrix (if requested), inertia invariants, and the rigid body mass tensor. Some guidelines are provided by Excite for defining the retained nodes of substructures used for connections, such as those between the blocks main bearing and the crankshafts main journal, etc. 2. Excite Power Unit provides nonlinear joints/bearings/mounts for substructure connection, and load data such as gas forces (cylinder pressure vs. crank angle at each engine speed) and piston and timing drive impact forces. The nonlinear bearing forces/moments and responses at the retained degrees of freedom (DOFs) can then be calculated using an Excite multi-body dynamic analysis of the assembly model. 3. The generated loads at the retained DOFs can then be used to recover the responses at areas of interest in the engine structures for NVH or other simulations. In other words, the input to Excite is a set of condensed mass and stiffness matrices of the engine block, head, and other structural parts and the output from Excite could be nodal displacement, acceleration, or force in the frequency domain as complex terms (real/imaginary or magnitude/phase). The outputs from Excite then act as loads at the retained DOFs for dynamic simulations of the full system. For NVH, the vibrations at engine mounts can be used as load data for the vehicle body vibration and interior noise analysis and the surface velocities of the engine block can be used for the radiated noise analysis.
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Representative Workflows 1. From Abaqus to Excite You can use Excite Power Unit to create parts and connections and then assemble the model as follows (see details in Excite Power Unit Users Guide):

In the process of creating the model, double click Powerunit to open the properties dialog, as shown below, and define the body type as Flexible or Rigid.

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For 3D File select Powerunit.inp (the model data of input file). For Condensed Model select Powerunit.exb (an Excite Body property file converted from an Abaqus substructure SIM file). If an EXB file does not exist, click on the arrow next to Condensed Model and select FEA Condensation. Click on FEA Condensation to open the FE Analysis Task Condensation dialog.

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For FE Model File select Powerunit.inp (the model data of input file). On the Retained DOFs tab, select the Include file that defines the retained DOFs (which would be the data lines of the *RETAINED NODAL DOFS option). Depending on the solver and solver version (as specified under the FE Analysis | Options menu), you can select LANCZOS or AMS as Eigenvalue Solver. If you want to perform internal data recovery using Excite Utilities (see details later) at the end of the Excite simulation run, from the Matrix Output tab, select Output Recovery Matrix to SIM File for full or partial recovery. If you want to perform external data recovery using Abaqus, no entry is needed on this tab.

Click on OK to bring up the FE Analysis dialog. Use the default selections at the bottom for Write Input File, Run Analysis, etc. and click Run for the selected FEA task(s). As a result, the substructure EXB file will be created.

Alternatively, you can generate the substructure externally in Abaqus and use Convert FE Data under the Utilities menu (as shown below) to convert the substructure SIM file to an EXB file. This method of creating the EXB is preferred if the flexible body generation in Excite takes more time than in Abaqus.
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The input file used for the substructure generation needs to have the undocumented parameter FLEXIBLE BODY=X defined on the *SUBSTRUCTURE GENERATE option in order to generate the needed matrices for the Excite flexible body.

On the Convert FE Data dialog, select FE Solver and Version and (for 3D File) the Abaqus input file that are used to generate the substructure SIM file, which is specified for Abaqus SIM File at the bottom of the dialog. For Condensed Model specify the EXB filename. Click OK and the EXB file will be created.

2. Multi-body Dynamics in Excite The Load Data dialog under the Model menu is used to assemble load data to load sets, which can be assigned to bodies. Different methods can be used: load from generated set or import from file (ASCII). The automatically generated load items for gas forces (Auto-Gen. Crank Train Loads) are automatically linked to the right bodies (piston, conrod, powerunit, crankshaft) and nodes. The automatic load sets on
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bodies can be supported/overruled by the user defined load set definition. External loads from Excite Piston & Rings or Excite Timing Drive can be loaded into Excite Power Unit as a separate case set. Linear interpolation will be carried out for the generation of the loads for the appropriate load cases (or speeds). For speeds below and above the defined speeds, the GUI will take the data from the first/last defined speed (no extrapolation).

Use Simulation Control, Results Control, and Run under the Simulation menu (see details in Excite PowerUnit Users Guide) to define and run the simulation tasks. The job can be monitored through the Status report.

When the job is completed, click Show Results (under the Simulation menu) to view the responses of interest through an Excite post-processing tool IMPRESS Chart.

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4868 Abaqus-Excite Workflow 6

3. From Excite to Abaqus The results associated with a flexible body obtained from an Excite simulation are calculated at the retained nodal DOFs of the flexible body. If you are interested in the responses in areas other than the retained nodes of the structure, a data recovery can be performed and there are two ways of doing this: (a) Internal data recovery using Excite Utilities This task is performed internally using Data Recovery (under the Utilities menu). The recovery matrix is needed from the substructure EXB file, which is defined for the Condensed Model on the EXCITE Results tab.

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This utility extracts Excite results and carries out a data recovery of the results of the condensed model to results of the uncondensed model. The output from NVH data recovery analysis are .meg and .mer files which are needed for 3D post-processing in IMPRESS 3D and will be written to the case directory. (b) External data recovery using Excite FEA This task is performed with an external solver, like Abaqus. The load case needs to be specified first using Case Explorer (under the Model menu) if multiple load cases exist.

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For example, under FE Analysis | Tasks | Add New Task, select Dynamic Response Analysis and click OK.

On the General tab, select Method and specify data for modal steady state dynamics analysis.

For Type on the Boundaries tab, select Nodal Forces (CLOAD) or Nodal Accelerations (BASE MOTION) data at the retained DOFs.

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Output variables and response points of interest can be requested on the Results tab.

Shown below is part of the input file created by Excite for this FE analysis task. The load data at the retained DOFs is provided by Excite as *BASE MOTION loading defined in an Abaqus modal procedure when the Nodal Accelerations is selected on the Boundaries tab.
*HEADING Excite FEA Dynamic Response Analysis ** --------------------------------------------------------*INCLUDE, INPUT=..\..\..\fem\Powerunit_abq\Powerunit.inp ** ** Acceleration Excitation ** *AMPLITUDE, NAME=Powerunit-2636-1_R, DEFINITION=TABULAR, VALUE=RELATIVE, INPUT=Powerunit-2636-1_R.acce
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. . *AMPLITUDE, NAME=Powerunit-232707-3_I, DEFINITION=TABULAR, VALUE=RELATIVE, INPUT=Powerunit-232707-3_I.acce ** *STEP *FREQUENCY, EIGENSOLVER=LANCZOS 360,1,,-10000 ** *BOUNDARY, BASE NAME=BN_2636_1 2636, 1 . . *BOUNDARY, BASE NAME=BN_232707_3 232707, 3 ** *END STEP ** *STEP *STEADY STATE DYNAMICS, FREQUENCY SCALE=LINEAR, INTERVAL=RANGE 0.00000,2987.41263,90,1 ** *MODAL DAMPING, RAYLEIGH 1,360,41.8879020479,1.48544613552e-005 ** *SELECT EIGENMODES, GENERATE 1,360,1 ** *BASE MOTION, LOAD CASE=1, DOF=1, AMPLITUDE=Powerunit-2636-1_R, BASE NAME=BN_2636_1, TYPE=ACCELERATION . . *BASE MOTION, LOAD CASE=2, DOF=3, AMPLITUDE=Powerunit-232707-3_I, BASE NAME=BN_232707_3, TYPE=ACCELERATION ** ------ Output to data base: *OUTPUT, FIELD, FREQUENCY=1 *NODE OUTPUT V, ** *END STEP

Therefore, NVH data recovery can be done with Excite FEA tasks. The biggest difference between NVH data recovery with Excite Utilities and NVH data recovery with Excite FEA is that in Excite Utilities, a transformation matrix is needed, but in Excite FEA the calculation can start without a transformation matrix; that is, Excite FEA provides the step definitions using load data at the retained DOFs calculated by Excite and uses the selected solver to calculate the frequency responses (e.g. U, V, A, ) at the requested node sets or element sets. With method (a) or (b) for data recovery, you can use Program | New | IMPRESS 3D and import the .mer and .meg files created by internal data recovery or the .odb created by external data recovery.

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When post-processing in Abaqus/Viewer or external to Excite is preferred, this workflow can be extended to Abaqus-Excite-Abaqus workflow. For example, you can export the multi-body dynamics results from Excite at each engine speed and use Abaqus to conduct various dynamic analyses (transient or steady-state). For powertrain radiated noise problems, you can add the acoustic mesh (using acoustic finite and infinite elements) to the engine block model for coupled structural-acoustic analysis to simulate the far-field acoustic responses (see Abaqus Answer 4267). You can also use the toPunch translator (see Answer 4814) to convert Abaqus output database files to Nastran punch files if the punch file is the preferred format for post-processing.

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