How to initialize "global" variables before @InitLocalVariables ?

[Mora1n]

Hello everyone, I would like to define a variable which has its default value and can be changed in @InitLocalVariables. Is there any way to realize it ?

[Mora1n]

For now I realize it as:

1. Define 2 local variables "flag" and "val":

@ LocalVariable real flag;
@ LocalVariable real val;

2. Normally, flag = 0. but sometimes flag > 0. for example: flag = 1.e-300
3. In @ InitLocalVariables,

if (flag < 1.e12) then (set default value to "val" and set flag = 1.e13), else we change the value of "val".

Is there any better way ?

[thelfer]

@Mora1n Beware that you in that case, you change the value of a copy of a global variable that you can't change, i.e. every time the behaviour is called, flag is reset to 1. I am not sure that this is what you want to do.
To be honest, parameters shall have been declared as constant variables. This was not done for

[Mora1n]

@thelfer You are right, now I haven't found a solution yet...

[thelfer]

@Mora1n I still don't know what you want to do :)

[thelfer]

@Mora1n I did not see your anwer, sorry

I'd like to use flag to record the loading status (i.e. loading or unloading) of each Gaussian point. At first the flag is set to 1 to represent the loading status, and then the generalized shear stress (which is what I chose here) is compared between two time steps to determine whether it is loading or unloading, and once it is unloading the flag is set to 0 and not modified, and the different statuses result in different Young's modulus. So I need to define a flag before @InitLocalVariable and set it to 1. Here the val are set to an extremely large value in order to initialize flag only once at the first time (normally it is very difficult to get a large randoma value).

Since you want a value a each Gauss point, the better is to use an auxiliary state variable. An auxiliary state variable appears from the calling solver as a standard internal state variable. Most solvers allow to initialize such variable (if yours don't, the default value is 0).

From what I understand, you can do something like:

@AuxiliaryStateVariable real flag;

@InitLocalVariables{
   // This is called before the behaviour integration

   // Do what you have to do depending on the
   // flag value (which contains either the initial value
  //  at the first time step or the value from the last time step otherwise)
}

// this is called after the behaviour integration, once the increment are known and state variables updated to their values at the end of the time step
@UpdateAuxiliaryStateVariables{
  // here update flag for the **next** time step
  ....
}