ANSYS Composite PrepPost Efficient Engineering of Layered Composite Structures Composite materials are formed from the combination of two or more layered materials, each having very different properties. Composite materials have become a standard for manufacturing products that are both light and strong. Additionally, composites provide much flexibility, enabling products with complex shapes, such as boat hulls or surfboards, to be manufactured. Among the many challenges of designing products from composites is defining the specifications of each layer that constitutes the composite material. To engineer layered composites, a designer must find the best combination of lamina, including the number of layers involved as well as the thickness and relative orientation of each layer. As with homogeneous materials, stresses, deformations and other performance indicators will help determine a product’s performance under actual working conditions. A range of failure criteria, from simple to more advanced formulations, is usually used to study how the layer material and their orientations affect the design of the product. ANSYS® Composite Prep- Post software provides all the necessary functionality for the analysis of layered composite structures. An intuitive interface efficiently defines materials, plies and stacking sequences; it also offers a wide choice of state-of-the-art failure criteria. ANSYS solvers provide the foundation for accurate results, while additional computations for the failure criteria are performed within the ANSYS Composite PrepPost application. The post-processing capabilities of ANSYS Composite PrepPost software allow an in-depth inves- Product Features Unique Material Definition Functionality, Tailored for Modeling Layered Composite Structures • Basic materials with engineering constants • Uniaxial fabrics with vendorspecific data • Multiaxial fabrics with vendorspecific data • Standard laminate templates Coordinate Systems • Cartesian, cylindrical, spherical Oriented Element-Set Concept • Definition of material application direction independent of shell normal • Definition of material 0° direction • Overlapping multiple oriented element sets • Unique possibility of easy asymmetric laminate definition • No need of ply subdivision Surface and 3-D Modeling • Generation of layered solid composite models from layered shell models • Layer-wise post-processing of layered solid and layered shell models • CAD geometry import (STEP, IGES): - Modeling of core plies with variable thickness - Cut-off rules Draping and Flat-Wrap Functionality • Analysis of draping, write and load draping data • Analysis of fiber-angle correction processing • Flat-wrap analysis and export of plies with distortion Thickness visualization on the global structure Layer orientation and layer-wise failure criteria analysis on a complex hull shape

tigation of a product’s behavior. Simulation results can be looked at globally or viewed in detail down to the layer level, which enables users to accurately identify the reasons a structure might fail. Design iterations can easily be performed to take into account geometric changes or material variations. Useful for the analysis of an end product, the draping capabilities of ANSYS Composite PrepPost allow users to correctly identify the exact orientation of every layer of the composite. A flat-wrap capability and the ability to create ply books assist in product manufacturing. The product works...