Ortotropic or transversal isotropic material for topology optimization

Emanuel_20545
Emanuel_20545 Altair Community Member
edited February 19 in Community Q&A

Hello everyone,

I am currently writing my thesis in the field of Additive Manufacturing and am attempting to optimize the topology of orthotropic or transversally isotropic materials (specifically 3D printing materials). For this purpose, I want to provide the program with specific strength values for the three axes, which must not be exceeded to avoid material failure. Since I have the student version, I currently only have access to Inspire 2022.3, which does not support the solution for my problem. I was wondering if this could potentially be solved with Inspire 2023 or OptiStruct?

Thank you in advance,

Emanuel

Answers

  • Robert Hoglund
    Robert Hoglund
    Altair Employee
    edited February 19

    Hi Emanuel,

    I don't believe that Inspire supports transversely isotropic or orthotropic materials.

    You can do a topology optimization with the OptiStruct .fem model exported from Inspire if you swap the MAT1 isotropic material for the design space property with MAT9OR card for orthotropic materials.  That card allows you to input the directional properties (E1,E2,E3, etc.).

    https://2023.help.altair.com/2023/hwsolvers/os/topics/solvers/os/mat9ort_bulk_r.htm

    If you use this approach, you need to assign a coordinate system on elements for the material orientation.  One way to do this is to set the CORDM field on the PSOLID property to a user-defined system.

    Thanks,

    Rob H.