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Abaqus2Py¤

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First publication: March 15, 2024

Summary¤

Abaqus2Py is a thin Python interface for driving ABAQUS finite-element simulations from regular Python function calls. It wraps the lifecycle of a simulation—preprocessing, job submission, and postprocessing—behind a small API, so that running an ABAQUS model becomes as simple as calling a function and reading back its results.

Statement of need¤

ABAQUS is a widely used finite-element solver, but it is driven through its own command-line tools and Python-2 scripting interpreter, which makes it awkward to embed in modern, data-driven workflows. Generating large datasets of simulations—for surrogate modeling, design optimization, or machine learning—requires gluing together input-file generation, job submission, result extraction, and synchronization with the solver, all while bridging the gap to a contemporary Python 3 environment.

Abaqus2Py provides that glue. It generates the preprocess/postprocess scripts that ABAQUS executes in its own interpreter, submits jobs through the abaqus CLI, polls for completion, and reads the results back into Python 3—handling the Python-2 pickle compatibility details transparently. ABAQUS itself is not a Python dependency, so the library can be developed and tested without it installed. Through its f3dasm adapter, Abaqus2Py plugs directly into data-driven design pipelines, turning an ExperimentData of design parameters into a batch of ABAQUS simulations with reproducible, HPC-ready orchestration.

Key Features¤

  • Two public classes — AbaqusSimulator (standalone driver) and F3DASMAbaqusSimulator (an f3dasm.DataGenerator adapter).
  • Full simulation lifecycle — preprocess → submit → postprocess, or a single combined run.
  • ABAQUS-free development — ABAQUS is invoked via the abaqus CLI, never imported, so the package installs and tests without a solver present.
  • Python-2 ↔ Python-3 bridging — generated scripts and pickle (de)coding transparently handle ABAQUS's Python-2 interpreter.
  • f3dasm integration — run simulations over an ExperimentData with per-sample working directories and HPC/SLURM orchestration.

Dependencies¤

Abaqus2Py builds on the following packages:

Package Description
f3dasm Framework for data-driven design and analysis of structures and materials
ABAQUS Finite-element solver, driven through its abaqus CLI (not a Python dependency)

Authorship¤

Authors: - Jiaxiang Yi (J.Yi@tudelft.nl) - Martin van der Schelling (M.P.vanderSchelling@tudelft.nl)

Authors affiliation: - Bessa Research Group @ Delft University of Technology

Maintainers: - Martin van der Schelling (M.P.vanderSchelling@tudelft.nl)

Maintainers affiliation: - Bessa Research Group @ Delft University of Technology

Getting started¤

Installation instructions for users¤

The package is available on PyPI:

pip install abaqus2py

Alternatively, install the latest version from source:

git clone https://github.com/bessagroup/abaqus2py.git
cd abaqus2py
pip install -e .

Abaqus2Py drives the solver through the abaqus command-line tool; a working ABAQUS installation is required at runtime, but not to install or test the package.

Installation instructions for developers¤

To install the package for development (or for building the mkdocs documentation), install the optional dependency groups after cloning:

pip install -e '.[dev,docs,tests]'

This project is uv-managed, so you can equivalently run uv sync. See the Contributing Guide for detailed development instructions, and the Getting Started Guide for a walkthrough of the API.

Studies¤

studies/fragile_becomes_supercompressible/ is a full worked example reproducing Bessa et al. (2019), wiring F3DASMAbaqusSimulator into a Hydra-configured, HPC-oriented two-stage (linear-buckle → Riks) f3dasm workflow. The accompanying ABAQUS modeling scripts live in scripts/. See studies/fragile_becomes_supercompressible/main.py for the canonical end-to-end usage pattern.

Community Support¤

  • If you find any issues, bugs or problems within this repository, please use the GitHub issue tracker to report them.
  • If you have questions, feature requests or ideas for this project, please use the GitHub Discussions

Please refer to abaqus2py's Code of Conduct

Citing¤

If you use Abaqus2Py in your research, please cite it. Citation metadata is provided in CITATION.cff; the corresponding BibTeX entry is:

@software{abaqus2py,
  author  = {Yi, Jiaxiang and van der Schelling, Martin P.},
  title   = {{Abaqus2Py: A Python interface for running ABAQUS simulations}},
  year    = {2026},
  version = {1.1.0},
  url     = {https://github.com/bessagroup/abaqus2py}
}

License¤

Copyright 2026, Bessa Research Group

All rights reserved.

This project is licensed under the BSD 3-Clause License. See LICENSE for the full license text.