How do you compare your solution with abaqus? Do you use paraview, or integrate some reference quantities. If you are using paraview, you Need to use XDMFFile.write_checkpoint to save the solution as something other than a CG-1 interpolation. See: Loading xdmf data back in .
I guess that @bleyerj might be able to give you some more pointers given that he is on of the authors of the code.