Total time vs Step time in ABAQUS

ABAQUS has two measures of time in a simulation.

In simulations involving time in ABAQUS one will encounter with two types of time increments, total time increment and step time increment.

The total time increases throughout all general steps and is the accumulation of the total step time from each general step.

Each step also has its own time scale (known as the step time), which begins at zero for each step.

Variations in parameters (such as load and BC) can be defined in terms of either of above increments.

An example is shown below regarding it.

In below history is divided into three steps, each 100 seconds long, are shown below. Here we can observe that in total time step the increment in time is progressive throughout the simulation whereas in case of step time increment this time resets and starts again at every steps.

Fig. Step and total time for a simulation(Source: ABAQUS Documentation)

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For more information feel free to contact me or see the reference.

Source : ABAQUS documentation [http://dsk.ippt.pan.pl/docs/abaqus/v6.13/index.html]