In Abaqus, there are two primary analysis methods used for solving structural problems, namely Abaqus/Standard and Abaqus/Explicit (includes dynamic Explicit). Abaqus/Standard has static implicit and dynamic implicit and is suitable for solving smooth nonlinear problems.
However, the solution of these problems may converge with difficulty, because of the contact or material complexities which can cause a large number of iterations. Such analyses are more expensive in Abaqus/Standard due to the iteration which needs many sets of linear equations to be solved. Meanwhile, Abaqus/Explicit conducts the solution without iterating by explicitly advancing the kinematic state from the previous increment.
In fact, Explicit stands for explicit time integration. Although a given analysis may require a large number of time increments by using the explicit method, the analysis requires much less disk space and memory compared with Abaqus/Standard which requires many iterations. Hence, for problems in which the computational costs of the two programs are comparable, the disk space and memory savings of Abaqus/Explicit make it more attractive.
