The instructions below describe, in brief, how to use Abaqus on the cluster. The Abaqus manuals are also available for version 6.8 and version 6.6.

Create the following script file, with modifications necessary to reflect your account and directory structure.

The script below uses /nobackup/. Use this rather than your home directory - you'll get much better performance.

PBS Example

#!/bin/sh
#PBS -N abaqus_job
#tpn and ppn should match
#PBS -l nodes=8,tpn=4,qos=preempt,pmem=1500mb
#PBS -M your_uniqname@umich.edu
#PBS -m a
#PBS -q cac
#PBS -V

echo "I ran on $HOSTNAME"

cd /nobackup/$USER/abaqus_dir

#requested 1500mb/cpu 4 cpus per node
abaqus job=jobname inp=1010101 inter cpus=8 memory=6000mb

abaqus_v6.env

Abaqus has many tunable options. These options go in the file abaqus_v6.env. We have a global version on the cluster. Any options you wish to override you can place in three different locations. The order of preference (from highest to lowest) is:

• On the abaqus command line. Not all options are valid run:
  abaqus help
• In abaqus_v6.env in the current working directory of abaqus
• In abaqus_v6.env in your /home/uniqename/ directory

Useful options are:
scratch='/tmp/'

Full path name of the directory to be used for scratch files. The default value on UNIX is the value of the $TMPDIR environment variable or /tmp if $TMPDIR is not defined.

Maximum amount of memory of the physical memory that can be allocated during the input file prepossessing and during the Abaqus/Standard analysis phase. Please request the same or larger amount of memory with your PBS job.

Default precision version of Abaqus/Explicit to run. Possible values are SINGLE_PRECISION or DOUBLE_PRECISION. The default value is SINGLE_PRECISION.

If this parameter is set equal to MULTIPLE for an Abaqus/Explicit analysis, multiple output database files will be generated (one per cpu) and these files will be merged at the end of the analysis. If this parameter is set equal to SINGLE, only one output database file will be generated. The default value is SINGLE. MULTIPLE maybe useful when working with the /nobackup file system.

Abaqus Notes

• Use /nobackup/ always for the location of your odb and job files.
• abaqus/6.8 and latter do not use pre_memory or standard_memory options, use memory instead.
• abaqus/6.8 and latter have no standard_memory_policy option
• abaqus/6.8 and latter support Infiniband If ran on more than one infiniband connected node abaqus will use IB automatically.
• abaqus/6.8 and latter has support for MPI parallel in Standard. Many Standard calculations may use more than one node.
• For scratch disk we recommend using the default /tmp/. If /tmp is not large enough, point scratch at /nobackup.