Materials
Material definition.
Composite laminates are typically made up of layers of isotropic, orthotropic and/or
anisotropic materials. Specific material definitions vary by solver. For example, in
OptiStruct:
- Linear isotropic material for shell and solid elements: MAT1
- Linear orthotropic material for shell elements: MAT8
- Linear orthotropic material for solid elements: MAT9OR
- Linear anisotropic material for solid elements: MAT9
- Nonlinear isotropic/orthotropic/anisotropic material: See Multiscale Designer
Materials can be created from the Model Browser or Materials pull-down menu. Specific solver cards and attributes can be set in the Entity Editor.
The following table displays a list of typical composite material properties.
| Property (psi) | Carbon-Epoxy |
|---|---|
| E1 | 22.0e6 |
| E2 | 1.3e6 |
| E3 | 1.3e6 |
| n12 | 0.30 |
| n13 | 0.30 |
| n23 | 0.26 |
| G12 | 0.75e6 |
| G13 | 0.75e6 |
| G23 | 0.516e6 |
| a1 (/°F) | -0.30e-6 |
| a2 (/°F) | 18.0e-6 |
| a3 (/°F) | 18.0e-6 |
| tply (in) | 0.01 |