sandwich structures

Hi all,

 I am currently working on my Masters thesis which is the analysis of sandwich structures subjected to blast loading using Abaqus. Can someone suggest some references which would  explain me how to apply blast loading using abaqus. 

There is an example problem of submarine in the abaqus user's manual which includes the blast loading. But they've only given the inp file for that. 

So can someone also tell me how to generate .cae file from .inp file in abaqus.

Best Regards,