ORIENTATION OF ANISOTROPIC MATERIAL ON 3D ELEMENTS ON CURVED COMPONENT

Altair Forum User

Hello everybody,

 

We are trying to simulate a honeycomb component with OptiStruct. Our geometry has complex curves, as we illustrate in the attached drawing.

 

Given that the geometry has so many irregular shapes, we need to ensure that the strong directions of the material’s elasticity moduli (E and G) are always properly orientated (direction 1 is longitudinal and direction 3 is always normal to the surface, as we show in the image we attach).

 

We know how we should do it if our geometry was flat or had few orientation changes: we would define a new coordinate system and assign it at the CORDM option in the PSOLID card. Due to the constant orientation changes in our geometry, this option is not valid for us.

 

How could we solve this issue and ensure the properties are always correctly orientated?

Thank you very much. Kind regards,

 

Carlos and Núria

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Altair Forum User

Hi

 

Please can you check material orientation panel in Aerospace user profile.

 

 

 

Where you can define the orientation by curve.

 

Thank you

 

 

Altair Forum User

Hello Mr. Suryavanshi,

 

this method has proved to be really useful when using shell elements. I have been investigating it through the weekend and I learnt how to use it thanks to this video: http://www.screencast.com/t/oLcdJC8jH. I can now assign the most important direction to the material coordinate system of 2D geometries and the other two are automatically determined, because one is in-planar an the other one is normal to the analised surface. However, it doesn't seem to solve our problem, because we would need to assign at least another direction to define our 3D material properly. Do you know whether this tool is still useful for our case?

 

We have also tried a feature in Optistruct named Orientation Review (available in the Tools menu). This video by Mr. Ponginan introduces it: https://altairuniversity.com/learning-library/orientation-review/. By using it we can see what the material orientation is, but we still don't know how to change it.

 

Thank you very much for your reply,

 

Carlos

 

 

 

Altair Forum User

Hi carlosmarbo,

 

For an An-isotropic material we need to define separate systems at many level. I found a script for that, which i have attached in my reply, with a video which helps you to understand how it works. I hope this helps you

Thank you

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