Altair Multiscale Designer 2020.1 Release Notes

New Features

Fiber Orientation Tensor – Individual Slice or Average Slice Option
Now when simulating reinforced injection molded materials, users have the option to select damage law implementation at the Individual Slice level or at the Slice Average level. For each fiber orientation tensor, n-slices are generated for a given layer. The default ‘n’ is seven (7) slices per layer. When calculating criteria for damage laws, the Individual Slice option will enable damage law behavior on each individual slice. The Slice Average option will enable damage law behavior on the average of all slices in the layer. In general, it is suggested to use the Slice Average option, which was not available in prior releases.
New Damage Laws
Three new damage laws were implemented in v2020.1:
  1. Isotropic Volumetric Damage – Bilinear; used to model materials that exhibit catastrophic brittle behavior.
  2. Isotropic Volumetric Damage – 3-Piece Smooth; used to model material that exhibit evolving brittle behavior.
  3. Isotropic Smooth Damage and Rate Independent Plasticity – Used to model materials that exhibit evolving brittle and evolving ductile behavior, which is rate independent.
OptiStruct Linear Solution Sequences Supported
OptiStruct models that contain full nonlinear Multiscale Designer material models can now be used within linear (ANALYSIS STATICS) and non-linear (ANALYSIS NLSTAT) OptiStruct solution sequences.

Enhancements

Abaqus User Material Naming
The names of Abaqus Multiscale Designer material models can be any generic material name appended with a post-script of “_mdsMAT”. In addition, if the material model requires fiber orientation tensors, the name of the fiber orientation tensor file should be [MaterialName]_mdsFiberOri.dat.
Import General Laminates
In addition to Importing Injection Molding Laminates (which existed in prior versions), users can now import General Laminates to easily define Laminate definitions within the Multiscale Designer GUI using a spreadsheet-like file import. The format of the general laminate definition file is given below:

*Lami_flag
[N] (number of laminates defined in the file)
*Laminate Layup
-3 (defines the 3- or z-axis as the stack direction)
[laminate1 n] (number of plies in the laminate definition)
[ply1 orientation], [ply1 thickness]
[ply2 orientation], [ply2 thickness]
…
[plyn orientation], [plyn] thickness]
-3
[laminate2 N]
[ply1 orientation], [ply1 thickness]
[ply2 orientation], [ply2 thickness]
…
[plyn orientation], [plyn] thickness]
…
…
-3
[laminateN n]
[ply1 orientation], [ply1 thickness]
[ply2 orientation], [ply2 thickness]
…
[plyn orientation], [plyn] thickness]

Resolved Issues

  • Coefficient of Thermal Expansion (CTE) transformations that caused incorrect homogenized CTEs results for some materials in Step 2 was resolved.
  • Density not being passed from MATMDS material models in OptiStruct, which precluded solution sequences that required mass (i.e., MODAL, MFREQ, etc.) was resolved.
  • MATMDS material models in OptiStruct with CTETA elements not giving correct answers was resolved.