ORIENT

User subroutine to provide an orientation for defining local material directions or local directions for kinematic coupling constraints or local rigid body directions for inertia relief.

User subroutine ORIENT:

  • will be called at the start of the analysis at each location (material point, special-purpose element, coupling node, or reference point for inertia relief) for which local directions are defined with a user-subroutine-defined orientation;

  • is used to define the direction cosines of a local system of (material) directions with respect to the default basis directions (default basis directions are defined as the global directions for continuum elements and as the default surface directions for shell, membrane, and surface elements, as described in Conventions);

  • can be used to define the direction cosines orienting the layer of reinforcing material in membrane, shell, or surface elements (see Defining reinforcement);

  • can be used to provide a local system for defining the direction of action of rotary inertia, spring, dashpot, flexible joint, and elastic-plastic joint elements;

  • can be used with gasket elements to define the local in-plane directions for three-dimensional area and three-dimensional link elements that consider transverse shear and membrane deformations (see Defining the gasket behavior directly using a gasket behavior model);

  • can be used to define a local system in which coupling constraints are applied (see Coupling constraints and Kinematic coupling constraints);

  • can be used to define a local system at the reference point for the rigid body directions in which inertia relief loads are applied for the entire model (see Inertia relief);

  • will ignore rotation angles defined for layers of composite solids (see Solid (continuum) elements) but will take into account rotation angles defined for layers of composite shells (see Using a shell section integrated during the analysis to define the section behavior and Using a general shell section to define the section behavior); and

  • ignores any data specified for the associated orientation definition outside the user subroutine.

The local directions defined by user subroutine ORIENT must be specified relative to the default basis directions.

The following topics are discussed:

Related Topics
In Other Guides
Orientations
*ORIENTATION
Eigenvalue analysis of a piezoelectric transducer

ProductsAbaqus/Standard