Composite Browser

Use the Composite Browser to create, organize, and manage composite modeling data.

The Composite Browser consolidates entities and tools used in ply-based models. Ply-based models can be created, edited and reviewed from within the Composite Browser. Additionally, composite stress toolbox functionality, such as ABD matrix calculation, is provided in the context menu of relevant entities.

Browser Interface

The Composite Browser interface.

The Composite Browser consists of two panes:

The top pane contains a hierarchical view of either ply-based, or zone-based composite data.
The bottom pane contains the Entity Editor.

Views

Composite views.

View options appear at the top of the Composite Browser.

Laminate View

The laminate view displays entities used in a ply-based model build. This includes:

Laminates
Plies
Shapes (sets)
Properties
Materials
System Collectors
Tables

The laminate view should be used for ply-based model creation, editing and review. Drag and drop functionality is also provided to stack plies in a laminate and to stack sublaminates in an interface laminate:

Plies can be dragged between the Unstacked Plies folder and the laminate in which they should be stacked.
Ply order within a laminate can be manipulated by dragging one of more plies to a new location within the laminate.
Interface Laminates and sublaminates can be defined by dragging one or more laminates into another laminate. The parent becomes an interface laminate and the children become sublaminates. For more information on this modeling technique, see Interface Laminates.
Material, Ply and Laminate level composite stress toolbox calculations, accessed from the Analyze context menu option.

Zone View

The zone view displays all the zones of constant thickness in laminates which contain only plies with a shape defined by an element set. Zones contain a subset of the plies which make up a laminate. One zone is calculated for each unique subset of plies. Zones are calculated automatically as a ply-based model is created and edited. Current functionality includes:

Laminate level composite stress toolbox calculations, such as ABD matrix calculation, accessed from the Analyze context menu option.
Editing of orientation, thickness and material of plies passing through a zone. Any changes will propagate to all zones that contain the edited ply.

Orientation Visualization

Common orientation methods.

Orientation visualization methods are available from the ply and laminate context menus under Review Orientations. Each of these methods work in a similar way to the selector tool available in most browsers. If either of the orientation methods are active, orientation vectors will be plotted on elements of the selected ply.

Ply 1 Direction: Displays ply 1 direction (fiber) orientations. If a drape table is assigned to the selected ply, drape corrections are included as part of the vector.
Material Reference: Displays the x, y and z axes of the material reference orientation. This is the direction which ply orientations rotate from.

Composite Stress Toolbox

Composite stress tools functionality.

Composite stress toolbox functionality is provided in the context menu of relevant entities. Engineering constants and relevant material/laminate matrices can be calculated for:

Laminates: If plies have a shape defined by an element set, all zones of contain thickness in laminate. If one or more plies do not have shape defined, the full list of plies in the laminate is used.
Zones
Plies
Materials

Additionally, analysis entities can be created to run laminate strength, load response, and first ply failure analyses. For more information, see Composite Stress Toolbox.

Solver-Specific Details

Details for various solvers.

Entities created in the Composite Browser are assigned the most common solver card for a typical ply-based model. Properties and Shapes are filtered based on solver card to only display appropriate cards for a ply-based model. Additionally, in the OptiStruct profile, the appropriate card is set for laminate and ply entities upon creation.

OptiStruct

Entity	Displayed Cards
Property	PCOMPP
Set	SET_ELEM, None

Radioss

Entity	Displayed Cards
Property	PCOMPP
Set	SET_ELEM, None

Abaqus

Entity	Displayed Cards
Property	*SHELL_SECTION_COMPOSITE, with “Defined layers” unchecked
Set	ELSET, None

ANSYS

Entity	Displayed Cards
Property	SECTYPE, with TYPE=SHELL, PLIES=0
Set	SET_ELEM, None

LS-DYNA

Entity	Displayed Cards
Property	SectShll
Set	Shell, None

Nastran

Entity	Displayed Cards
Property	PCOMPP
Set	SET, None

Context Menu

Access additional composite options from the Composite Browser's context menu.

The context menu items appear only when applicable.

Entity	Available for	Description
Analyze	Laminate, Material, Ply, Zone	Perform traditional composite stress toolbox calculations.
Absorb	White space	Access to Solver Zone Property absorb, which converts solver properties to laminates and plies. For more information, see FE Absorb Plies
Assign	Property	Opens a dialog from which you can assign the selected template property to elements.
Card Edit	Laminate, Material, Ply, Property, Shape, System Collector, Table	You can edit any single item's card. You can edit multiple items provided that they use identical card images. This option displays the card image of the chosen entity for the current solver template; if a template is not loaded or if the entity does not have any card images associated with the loaded template, an error message displays in the status bar.
Collapse	All Folders, Laminate	Closes the selected folder(s) and its children folders (if any), so that only the selected folder displays.
Collapse All	White space	Closes all of the folders in the tree structure, so that only the top-most level of items displays.
Create	White space and entity folders	Creates entity of selected type and opens it in Entity Editor.
Delete	All	Deletes the selected entities. If the entity to be deleted contains children, these will not be deleted.
Drape	Laminate, Ply	Access to Kinematic Drape. For more information, see Tools.
Duplicate	Laminate, Material, Ply, Property, Shape, System Collector	Duplicates the selected entity and opens it in Entity Editor. For a ply, the option of duplicating multiple times is provided.
Empty	Laminate, Ply, Shape	Preview and delete empty collectors.
Expand	All folders, Laminate	Opens the selected folders and children in the tree structure, exposing every item nested in the selected folder.
Expand All	White space	Opens all of the folders in the entire tree structure, exposing every item nested at every level.
Export	Laminate (Ply and Sub config only)	Export Laminate data. File types include: Spreadsheet – formatted table of plies within laminate Catia Stack Up
Hide	Laminate, Material, Ply, Property, Shape, System Collector, Zone	Turns off the entity in the graphics area. This selection affects each item’s local display control: it will make the icon become ghosted indicating the display state is off. This can also be used on an entity folder. In such cases, this hides all the items within that folder.
Import	Laminate (Ply and Sub config only)	Import Laminate data. File types include: Spreadsheet – formatted table of plies within a laminate Catia Stack Up
Insert	Ply (contained in Laminate only)	Creates a new ply and inserts it above the selected ply in a laminate.
Interfaces	Laminate (Interface config only)	Opens the Interfaces Dialog, which is used to define Interfaces in an Interface Laminate. Interfaces specify the order Sublaminates contact each other. For more information, see Interface Laminates.
Instance	Ply (contained in Laminate only)	Generates the input number of instance plies. Instance plies are exact replications of the main ply. Any changes made to the main ply will propagate to all instances. If an instance is edited directly, the link to the main ply will be broken.
Isolate	Laminate, Material, Ply, Property, Shape, System Collector,Zone	Isolates the selected entity in the graphics area and hides all other entities.
Orient	White space	Orient is used to access tools to manipulate element orientations: Element Normal – accesses the Orientation Review tool to manipulate element orientations. See Visualization. Material – accesses the Aerospace Material Orientation tool. See Aerospace Composite Tools. Ply Normal – accesses the Orientation Review tool to manipulate ply normals. See Visualization.
Realize	Laminate	Generates zone-based solver property cards for the selected laminate. For more information, refer to Laminate Realize Dialog.
Realize	Ply	Coverts a ply shape defined using geometry to a shape defined by an element set. See Shapes Defined by Geometry.
References	All	Any single item or multiple items can be selected. Opens the References Browser and displays the relationship of the selected entities to other entities in the model in a hierarchical tree structure.
Remove	Ply	Removes the selected ply(s) from their parent laminate and into the Unstacked Ply folder.
Rename	All	Any item can be renamed in the name text field. The new name must be unique. All instances of the renamed item update automatically. You can cancel the rename operation by pressing Esc. The high-level entity folders are non-editable, but you can rename folders containing the assembly hierarchy.
Rename Plies	Laminate, Ply	Access to dialog which provides several automatic ply naming methods. For more information, see Ply Rename
Reverse Orientation	Laminate, Ply	Multiples the orientation of selected ply(s) or plies within the selected laminate by -1.
Reverse Sequence	Laminate	Reverses the stacking sequence of plies contained in a laminate.
Review	Laminate, Material, Ply, Property, Shape, System Collector, Zone	Invokes Review mode, which displays selected entities irrespective of their display state, masked, active state (Entity State Browser).
Review Orientations	Laminate, Ply	Plots orientations vectors on elements contained in the selected ply or laminate. Two options are available: Ply1 Direction –Displays ply 1 direction (fiber) orientations. If a drape table is assigned to the selected ply, drape corrections are included as part of the vector. Material Reference –Displays the x, y and z axes of the material reference orientation. This is the direction which ply orientations rotate from.
Run	Analysis	Runs the selected analysis and opens the results in dedicated window.
Show	Laminate, Material, Ply, Property, Shape, System Collector, Zone	Displays the item(s) in the graphics area. The item's icon changes to bold indicating that the display state is on. Show can also be used at the folder level of an entity.
Show All	White space	Shows all entities contained in the Composite Browser.
Smooth		Accesses the Aerospace Ply Geometry Smoothing tool. For more information, see Aerospace Composite Tools.
Unused	Material	Preview and delete entities which are unreferenced in the database.

Utilities

Tools for working with composites.

FE Absorb Plies

FE Absorb Plies generates a ply-based model from zone-based properties.

Exact conversion of the zone-based model to ply-based model depends on the existence of global ply ID’s/name’s on the zones, for example PCOMPG instead of PCOMP. FE Absorb Plies will still run with zones that do not have global data, for example PCOMP, but the conversion relies on internal logic to determine how to connect plies from zone to zone.

From the Composite Browser right-click in white space and select Absorb > Zone Properties.
Import zone-based models with zone-based solver properties.
These FE models do not have any plies or laminates. The goal is to create plies and laminates from the zone-based solver properties.

Figure 6. No Plies or Laminates are in the FE Model
Select all of the zone-based solver properties which will be used to generate the ply-based model.
If you are using OptiStruct, select Update TMANUF of ply so that zone layer thickness is copied to PLY card TMANUF (used for sizing optimization).
If a zone ply shape has multiple disconnected regions, generate multiple plies, one for each disconnected region, by selecting Split disconnected ply regions into separate new ply entities.
After the conversion, laminates and plies are created. However converting a zone-based model to a ply-based model is not deterministic if global IDs or names are not defined in the properties. Many possibilities exist, especially the laminate stacking order. You are advised to check the laminate and reorder, if necessary.

Figure 7. Ply, Laminate and PCOMPP are Created in the Model after FE Absorb

Material Orientation

The Material Orientation tool provides several methods of assigning material x directions for shell and solid elements, and additionally z directions for solid elements.

Select the Entities on which to assign material orientation, either Elements or Properties.
Set the Color of orientation vectors drawn after applying material orientation.
To set the scale of orientation vectors drawn after applying material orientation, set Scaling Option to Auto or Manual.
Type a value into the Size field for the manual input for size of orientation vectors drawn after applying material orientation.
Set the X direction method. Choose from the following:
- Curve – spatially map input curve(s) as the x direction
  - Lines/Edges – lines which define the orientation
  - Flip direction – for lines/edges only. Determines whether the curve provided is +x direction or -x direction.
  - Nodes – list of lines that define the orientation
- System ID – system assigned as orientation
- System Axis – system and axis of system to map as x direction
- Angle – for OptiStruct and Nastran only. Directly enter rotation applied on THETA field of element.
Set a value for Normal by choosing one of the following:
- Element Normal – uses element z direction (can be viewed from 2D > composites > element normals panel if elements are selected). Typically, this option should be used.
- Surface Normal – aligns material z direction spatially to selected surface.

By Curve

Using curves/lines to create material direction:

Select the elements for which a new material angle will be assigned.
Select the lines or list of nodes to define the material direction. The element centroid will be taken and projected to the closest line/node segments and the line tangent direction will be found to assign the material angle.

Figure 8. A Circular Pattern of the Material Orientation is Assigned Based on the Outer Circular Line Direction

Other material orientation tools are also available.

By Node: Element material direction can be assigned using two nodes.

By System ID

The X axis of the selected system is projected to the elements to create element material direction.

By System Axis

You can select a local system and the direction of the axis to be projected to elements and create material direction.

By Angle

You can provide an angle by which material direction is rotated from the element N1-N2 direction.

Ply Geometry Smoothing

Ply Geometry Smoothing provides functionality to smooth finite element ply shapes, usually generated from concept level composite freesize optimization, and to generate geometry from finite element ply shapes.

From the Composite Browser, right click any ply and select Smooth.
Select the FE ply to be converted into geometry shape.
Choose the location where geometry should be placed.
- Original component
- Separate component for each ply
Select either line or surfaces geometry to be exported as step files.
Set Smooth Iteration to zero if the exact shape is to be preserved without smoothing the boundary. Otherwise, use 10-20 for the iteration.
If you would like to define small holes to be filled, patched, or removed from the ply, set small region to one of the following:
- Area Ratio – ratio of small region area to laminate area
- Element Count – number of elements that define the small region
To generate new plies if the input ply is made up of multiple separate regions, select Split disconnected ply regions into separate new ply entities.
Update ply element sets by selecting one of the following:
- Unchecked – generates requested geometry for ply but does not change element set assigned to input ply.
- Checked – in addition to generating requested geometry, a new element set that reflects smoothing is created and assigned to input ply.
Provide the step file name.
Geometry plies are created and exported to step files.

Figure 15. Result of Smoothing with Iterations = 0

Figure 16. Result of Smoothing with Iterations = 20

Ply Rename

Ply Rename provides several automated ply renaming methods

From the Composite Browser, right-click on Laminate or Ply entities and select Rename Plies.
Example output shows an example ply name based on the current options.
Check Include laminate prefix if a laminate name method should be prepended to the beginning of each ply name.

Note: This is only available if the selected plies are stacked in a laminate.
Select the Method for the laminate name.
- ID uses the laminate ID as a prefix. Additionally:
  1. Add a Prefix to the laminate ID.
  2. Specify Digits to pad the ID with “0” characters on the left. This input is the total number of digits in the string.
- Name uses the laminate name as a prefix.
Specify a Delimiter to place between the laminate prefix and the ply name.
Select the Method for the laminate name.
- Index uses the index of the ply in the laminate.
  Note: This is only available if the tool was accessed from a target laminate, or if the list of selected plies is the full parent laminate stack.
- ID uses the ply ID as a prefix.
- Shape counts each unique combination of ply material, orientation, and shape in order of ply stacking sequence of a laminate. Its output is the material name, orientation, shape name, and count in laminate, each separated by the previously set delimiter.
  Note: Prefix and Digits are not available for this method.
Add a Prefix to the ply Index or ID
Specify Digits to pad the Index or ID with “0” characters to the left. This input is the total number of digits in the string

Figure 17.