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*EL FILE

Keyword type: step

This option is used to save selected element variables averaged at the nodal points in a frd file (extension .frd) for subsequent viewing by CalculiX GraphiX. The following element variables can be selected:

- true (Cauchy) stress (key=S)
- strain (key=E). This is the Lagrangian strain for (hyper)elastic materials, the Eulerian strain for deformation plasticity and the deviatoric elastic left Cauchy-Green tensor for incremental plasticity.
- equivalent plastic strain (key=PE)
- the energy density (key=ENER)
- the internal state variables (key=SDV)

The selected variables are stored for the complete model. Due to the averaging process jumps at material interfaces are smeared out unless you model the materials on both sides of the interface independently and connect the coinciding nodes with MPC's.

The first occurrence of an *EL FILE keyword card within a step wipes out all previous element variable selections for file output. If no *EL FILE card is used within a step the selections of the previous step apply. If there is no previous step, and no element variable selection nor nodal variable selection is made for file output, the stresses (S) are stored by default.

The only optional parameter is FREQUENCY, and applies to nonlinear calculations where a step can consist of several increments. Default is FREQUENCY=1, which indicates that the results of all increments will be stored. FREQUENCY=N with N an integer indicates that the results of every Nth increment will be stored. The final results of a step are always stored. If you only want the final results, choose N very big. The value of N applies to *EL FILE, *ELPRINT, *NODE FILE and *NODE PRINT. If the FREQUENCY parameter is used for more than one of these keywords with conflicting values of N, the biggest value applies to all.

First line:

- *EL FILE
- Enter any needed parameters and their values.

Second line:

- Identifying keys for the variables to be printed, separated by kommas.

    Example:

    *EL FILE
    S,PE

requests that the (Cauchy) stresses and the equivalent plastic strain is stored in .frd format for subsequent viewing with CalculiX GraphiX.

Example files: beamt, fullseg, segment1.

Next: *EL PRINT Up: Input deck format Previous: *ELEMENT Contents