Material Designer User's Guide

ANSYS, Inc. Release 2025 R1

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Table of Contents
1. Getting Started ....................................................................................................................................... 1
1.1. Overview .......................................................................................................................................... 1
1.1.1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1
1.1.2. Principle .................................................................................................................................. 2
1.1.3. Supported Platforms ................................................................................................................ 2
1.1.4. Known Limitations ................................................................................................................... 2
1.1.5. First Steps ................................................................................................................................ 4
1.2. Graphical User Interface .................................................................................................................... 4
1.2.1. Ribbon Bar ............................................................................................................................... 5
1.2.2. Outline .................................................................................................................................... 7
1.2.3. Options Panel .......................................................................................................................... 8
1.2.4. Results Table ............................................................................................................................ 9
1.2.5. Material Designer Options ...................................................................................................... 13
1.2.6. Unit Systems .......................................................................................................................... 14
1.3. Workbench Workflow Examples ...................................................................................................... 15
1.3.1. Basic Workflow ....................................................................................................................... 16
1.3.2. Using Computed Materials in Downstream Analyses ............................................................... 16
1.3.3. Variable Material .................................................................................................................... 17
1.3.4. Parameter Fitting ................................................................................................................... 18
1.3.5. Workflow for Woven Composites ............................................................................................ 19
1.3.6. Workflow for Short Fiber Composites ...................................................................................... 19
1.3.7. Transfer to Mechanical ............................................................................................................ 20
1.4.Tutorials .......................................................................................................................................... 23
1.4.1. UD Composite Tutorial ........................................................................................................... 24
1.4.2. Woven Composite Tutorial ...................................................................................................... 34
1.4.2.1. Initialize the Analysis ..................................................................................................... 34
1.4.2.2. Design the Woven Composite ........................................................................................ 36
1.4.2.3. Study the Effect of Shear ................................................................................................ 40
1.4.3. User Defined RVE Tutorial ....................................................................................................... 42
1.4.3.1. Initialization .................................................................................................................. 42
1.4.3.2. Define Input Materials ................................................................................................... 43
1.4.3.3. Prepare the User Defined RVE in Material Designer ......................................................... 44
1.4.3.4. Standard Steps in Material Designer ............................................................................... 47
2. Material Designer Features ................................................................................................................... 51
2.1. Model Type ..................................................................................................................................... 51
2.1.1. Lattice .................................................................................................................................... 52
2.1.1.1. User Defined Lattices ..................................................................................................... 54
2.1.2. UD Composite ........................................................................................................................ 54
2.1.3. Random UD Composite .......................................................................................................... 55
2.1.4. Short Fiber Composite ............................................................................................................ 56
2.1.4.1. Orientation Tensor ......................................................................................................... 59
2.1.5. Woven Composite .................................................................................................................. 60
2.1.5.1. Fabric Fiber Angle .......................................................................................................... 62
2.1.5.1.1. Motivation ............................................................................................................ 62
2.1.5.1.2. Definition ............................................................................................................. 63
2.1.5.1.3. Consequences ...................................................................................................... 64
2.1.6. Particle .................................................................................................................................. 64
2.1.7. Random Particle ..................................................................................................................... 65
2.1.8. Honeycomb ........................................................................................................................... 66

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Material Designer User's Guide

2.1.9. Triply Periodic Minimal Surface RVEs ....................................................................................... 68

2.1.10. User Defined RVE ................................................................................................................. 69
2.1.10.1. Hints for Importing Geometry for User Defined RVEs .................................................... 72
2.2. Assign Materials .............................................................................................................................. 74
2.3. Mesh .............................................................................................................................................. 75
2.4. Analysis Settings ............................................................................................................................. 76
2.5. Experimental Data (for Short Fiber Models) ...................................................................................... 77
2.6. Solve .............................................................................................................................................. 79
2.6.1. Constituents Calibration for Short Fiber Analytical Models ....................................................... 80
2.6.1.1. Set Up the Constituents Calibration ............................................................................... 80
2.6.1.2. Review the Results ......................................................................................................... 81
2.6.2. Solve Constant Material .......................................................................................................... 81
2.6.3. Solve Variable Material ........................................................................................................... 82
2.6.3.1. Short Fiber Wizard ......................................................................................................... 83
2.6.3.1.1. Theory Background ............................................................................................... 83
2.6.3.1.2. How to use the Wizard .......................................................................................... 84
2.6.3.2. Generated Material ........................................................................................................ 85
2.6.4. Curve Fitting for Short Fiber Models ........................................................................................ 86
2.6.4.1. Setting Up the Curve Fitting Analysis ............................................................................. 87
2.6.4.2. Review the Results ......................................................................................................... 89
2.7. Display ........................................................................................................................................... 92
2.7.1. Display Element Orientation ................................................................................................... 92
2.8. Charts ............................................................................................................................................. 94
2.8.1. Chart Examples ...................................................................................................................... 95
2.9. Data Management .......................................................................................................................... 98
2.9.1. Update .................................................................................................................................. 98
2.9.2. Refresh .................................................................................................................................. 98
2.9.3. Clear Generated Data ............................................................................................................. 99
2.9.4. Export to CSV ......................................................................................................................... 99
2.9.5. Export to h5 ........................................................................................................................... 99
3. Theory Documentation ....................................................................................................................... 101
3.1. Analytical Homogenization ........................................................................................................... 102
3.1.1. Modeling Assumptions ......................................................................................................... 103
3.1.2. Computation of Material Properties ...................................................................................... 103
3.1.2.1. Linear-Elastic Material Properties ................................................................................. 103
3.1.2.1.1. Homogenization of Unidirectional Composites .................................................... 103
3.1.2.1.2. Orientations Averaging ....................................................................................... 103
3.1.2.2. Coefficients of Thermal Expansion ................................................................................ 104
3.1.2.2.1. Homogenization of Unidirectional Composites .................................................... 104
3.1.2.2.2. Orientations Averaging ....................................................................................... 105
3.1.2.3. Thermal Conductivity .................................................................................................. 105
3.1.2.3.1. Homogenization of Unidirectional Composites .................................................... 105
3.1.2.3.2. Orientations Averaging ....................................................................................... 106
3.2. Finite Element Based Homogenization .......................................................................................... 106
3.2.1. Modeling Assumptions ......................................................................................................... 106
3.2.1.1. Lattice Structures ......................................................................................................... 107
3.2.1.2. Unidirectional (UD) Composites ................................................................................... 107
3.2.1.3. Random (Misaligned) UD Composites .......................................................................... 107
3.2.1.4. Short Fiber Composites ................................................................................................ 107
3.2.1.5. Woven Composites ...................................................................................................... 107
3.2.1.6. Particle Reinforced Composites .................................................................................... 108

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 Material Designer User's Guide

3.2.1.7. Random Particle Reinforced Composites ...................................................................... 108

3.2.1.8. Honeycomb Structures ............................................................................................... 108
3.2.1.9. Triply Periodic Minimal Surface RVEs ............................................................................ 108
3.2.1.10. User Defined RVE ....................................................................................................... 109
3.2.2. Computation of Material Properties ...................................................................................... 109
3.2.2.1. Orthotropic Linear-Elastic Material Properties ............................................................... 109
3.2.2.1.1. Periodic Boundary Conditions ............................................................................. 111
3.2.2.1.2. Non-Periodic Boundary Conditions ...................................................................... 111
3.2.2.2. Fully Anisotropic Linear-Elastic Material Properties ....................................................... 112
3.2.2.3. Orthotropic Secant Coefficients of Thermal Expansion .................................................. 113
3.2.2.3.1. Periodic Boundary Conditions ............................................................................. 114
3.2.2.3.2. Non-Periodic Boundary Conditions ...................................................................... 114
3.2.2.4. Orthotropic Thermal Conductivity ................................................................................ 115
3.2.2.4.1. Periodic Boundary Conditions ............................................................................. 115
3.2.2.4.2. Non-Periodic Boundary Conditions ...................................................................... 116
3.3. Hill Plasticity Curve Fitting for Short Fiber Reinforced Composites .................................................. 116
3.3.1. Material Modeling ................................................................................................................ 117
3.3.1.1. Plasticity Model ........................................................................................................... 117
3.3.1.2. Hill Yield Criterion ........................................................................................................ 118
3.3.1.3. Parametrization of the Hill Yield Criterion ..................................................................... 118
3.3.1.3.1. Phenomenological Parametrization ..................................................................... 119
3.3.1.3.2. Parametrization Based on Orientation Averaging ................................................ 120
3.3.1.4. Isotropic Hardening ..................................................................................................... 121
3.3.2. Fitting the Material Properties from Experimental Data ......................................................... 121
3.3.2.1. Equivalent Stress and Plastic Strain for Uniaxial Tensile Loading .................................... 122
3.3.2.2. Hill Yield Criterion ........................................................................................................ 123
3.3.2.3. Isotropic Hardening ..................................................................................................... 124
4. Best Practices ...................................................................................................................................... 125
4.1. Lattice structures .......................................................................................................................... 125
4.2. Woven composites ........................................................................................................................ 125
4.3. Short Fiber Composites ................................................................................................................. 125
4.4. Misaligned UD Composites ........................................................................................................... 125
4.5. Random Particle Reinforced Composites ....................................................................................... 126
4.6. Triply Periodic Minimal Surface RVEs .............................................................................................. 126
4.7. User-Defined RVEs ........................................................................................................................ 126
5. References ........................................................................................................................................... 127

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List of Figures
1.1. Ansys Material Designer GUI ................................................................................................................... 5
1.2. Material Designer Ribbon Bar for FE Models ............................................................................................ 5
1.3. Curve Fitting Tool .................................................................................................................................... 6
1.4. Material Designer Ribbon Bar for an Analytical Homogenization .............................................................. 6
1.5. Material Designer Outline for an FE-based Homogenization .................................................................... 7
1.6. Material Designer Outline for an Analytical Homogenization ................................................................... 8
1.7. Material Designer Options Panel ............................................................................................................. 9
1.8. Material Designer Options .................................................................................................................... 13
1.9. Material Designer Component System .................................................................................................. 16
1.10. Material Designer Export to Engineering Data ..................................................................................... 16
1.11. Material Designer with Static Structural Analysis .................................................................................. 17
1.12. Material Designer with ACP ................................................................................................................. 17
1.13. Material Designer with Variable Material .............................................................................................. 18
1.14. Material Designer with ACP ................................................................................................................. 18
1.15. Parametric Design Workflow ............................................................................................................... 19
1.16. Woven Materials in Material Designer .................................................................................................. 19
1.17. Material Designer to Static Structural connection ................................................................................ 20
1.18. Transfer Settings for Material Designer ................................................................................................ 21
1.19. Imported objects for a UD Composite (no element orientations are defined) ........................................ 22
1.20. Imported objects for a Woven Composite: conformal and non-conformal ............................................. 23
2.1. Model Type Toolbar ............................................................................................................................... 51
2.2. Change Model Type .............................................................................................................................. 52
2.3. Lattice Geometry Options ..................................................................................................................... 53
2.4. UD Composite Geometry Options ......................................................................................................... 55
2.5. Random Unidirectional Composite Geometry Options ........................................................................... 56
2.6. Short Fiber Composite Geometry Options ............................................................................................. 57
2.7. Short Fiber Composite Setup Options ................................................................................................... 58
2.8. Woven Composite Geometry Options ................................................................................................... 60
2.9. Particle Geometry Options .................................................................................................................... 64
2.10. Random Particle Geometry Options .................................................................................................... 65
2.11. Honeycomb Geometry Options .......................................................................................................... 66
2.12. Expanded Honeycomb Geometry ....................................................................................................... 67
2.13. Extruded Honeycomb Geometry ........................................................................................................ 68
2.14. TPMS Geometry Options ..................................................................................................................... 68
2.15. Assign Materials .................................................................................................................................. 74
2.16. Material Properties Dialog ................................................................................................................... 75
2.17. Create RVE Mesh ................................................................................................................................. 75
2.18. Analysis Settings ................................................................................................................................. 76
2.19. Injection molded specimens needed for the uniaxial tension experiments ........................................... 78
2.20. Uniaxial Dataset dialog ....................................................................................................................... 79
2.21. Options- Constituents Calibration ........................................................................................................ 80
2.22. Sampling of the orientation tensor space ............................................................................................ 84
2.23. Samples in yellow are generated by symmetry considerations. ............................................................. 86
2.24. Outline of a complete Short Fiber Composite analysis .......................................................................... 86
2.25. Hill Plasticity Curve Fitting options ...................................................................................................... 87
2.26. Uniaxial Dataset dialog ....................................................................................................................... 88
2.27. Edit initial values dialog ....................................................................................................................... 88
2.28. Hill Plasticity Stress-Strain Chart options .............................................................................................. 89
2.29. Examples of stress-plastic strain curve ................................................................................................. 90

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Material Designer User's Guide

2.30. Examples of stress-total strain curves ................................................................................................... 91

2.31. Stress-strain curves for different values of a11 and a22 ......................................................................... 92
2.32. Display Element Orientation Options ................................................................................................... 93
2.33. Options for charts. Left: 2D chart, Right: 3D chart .................................................................................. 94
2.34. Chart example 1 .................................................................................................................................. 96
2.35. Chart example 2 .................................................................................................................................. 96
2.36. Chart example 3 .................................................................................................................................. 97
2.37. Chart example 4 .................................................................................................................................. 97
2.38. Chart Example 5 .................................................................................................................................. 98
3.1. Homogenization vs. Dehomogenization .............................................................................................. 102
3.2. Effect of the aspect ratio, fiber volume fraction, and orientation sensitivity parameter on the yield ratio
in normal direction ................................................................................................................................... 120
3.3. Injection molded specimens needed for the uniaxial tension experiments ........................................... 122

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Chapter 1: Getting Started
The following sections provide information on Material Designer and how to get started.
1.1. Overview
1.2. Graphical User Interface
1.3. Workbench Workflow Examples
1.4.Tutorials

Click here for a quick video overview of the capabilities of Material Designer.

1.1. Overview
The following sections provide an overview of Material Designer.
1.1.1. Introduction
1.1.2. Principle
1.1.3. Supported Platforms
1.1.4. Known Limitations
1.1.5. First Steps

1.1.1. Introduction
Simulating a part which possesses a complicated micro-structure poses a difficult challenge. Composite
materials are the classic example, whether fiber-reinforced or particle-reinforced. Meta-materials like
honeycomb structures or lattice structures fall into this category as well, along with many others.
Simulating these kinds of parts using Finite Element Analysis often requires experimental testing on
fabricated samples to determine their exact properties, an expensive and time-consuming process.

Ansys Material Designer is a powerful tool which replaces costly experimental testing. Its algorithms
can calculate the properties of a homogenized material using the known properties of its base mater-
ials. It can handle a wide range of meta-materials, beyond just composites. And it does more than
compute homogenized properties. It can also parameterize your micro-structure so you can determine
which combination of material properties is optimal for your specific application.

Material Designer’s utility is evident in the field of additive manufacturing. It can generate homogenized
materials comprised of lattice structures and has the tools for optimizing the structures quickly and
efficiently, without the time and expense of physical testing.

As a beta feature in Release 2025 R1, Material Designer can also compute stress-strain curves for micro-
structures with nonlinear constituent materials. For more information, see the document Material
Designer Beta Features.

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Getting Started

1.1.2. Principle
Material Designer, which uses the Ansys SpaceClaim Direct Modeler interface, provides you the tools
to design and analyze a wide variety of complex micro-structures.

It operate seamlessly within the Ansys Workbench environment as a single System or as part of a
larger analysis workflow. Simply drag and drop the Material Designer Component System onto
your Project Schematic in Workbench, and double-click the Engineering Data Cell to enter the
properties of the base materials.

With another click, you have access to all the tools within Material Designer for defining your mater-
ial. You can select the desired geometry, assign constituent materials, and choose your analysis settings.
Material Designer will then calculate the properties of your new homogenized material.

Returning to the Workbench Project Schematic, you can export the results downstream to the En-
gineering Cells of subsequent systems for further simulation. If your project involves composite
materials, you can feed the results to Ansys Composite PrepPost for lay-up design. Further downstream,
you can stress-test your designs in Ansys Mechanical. You can complete an entire project- from
designing the materials to the final production plan- within a single Workbench Project Schematic.

Whether you use Material Designer in a single Workbench System or you integrate its capabilities
into a larger Workbench project, it brings unparalleled efficiency to the work of designing and simu-
lating complex microstructures.

1.1.3. Supported Platforms

Material Designer is supported for Windows systems. For information about specific operating system
versions, see the Platform Support section of the Ansys Website.

1.1.4. Known Limitations

Material Designer has the following known limitations:

• Starting in Release 2025 R1, due to the geometry kernel change, geometries opened with SpaceClaim
2024 R2 or earlier releases cannot be copied and pasted to Material Designer 2025 R1 or future
releases. Ansys recommends that before copying and pasting such a geometry, you first open the
geometry in Release 2025 R1 and save it.

• Undo/redo functionality is not supported.

• Periodic meshing is not supported for block structured meshes or non-conformal meshes.

• Material Designer does not respect the Suppress for Physics option.

• Variable fully anisotropic materials computed by Material Designer cannot be used in subsequent
analyses. As a workaround you would need to define them manually in Mechanical APDL.

• When duplicating a downstream system connected to Material Designer, a duplicate output mater-
ial might be created in the Engineering Data cell of the original and the new downstream systems.
As a workaround, you should delete the output material in the Engineering Data cell of the
downstream systems. Then delete and recreate the connections from Material Designer again. Next,
check the material assignments carefully. The same applies when duplicating a Material Designer

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 Overview

system together with a downstream system or when importing a Workbench project archive file
containing a Material Designer system together with a downstream system.

• If you already transferred a computed material to a downstream Engineering Data cell and then
deactivate the computation of a property in Material Designer, that property will not be removed
from Engineering Data when you update the project. You can either remove it manually or use
Refresh From Linked Source in Engineering Data.

• If you run into Ansys licensing error messages upon startup of Material Designer, select an Alternate
License in the following dialog:

You can also change the preference afterwards in Material Designer using the License Preferences
dialog found here: File > SpaceClaim Options > License. While you are in the dialog, you should
also specify the license to be used for Meshing.

In the case of batch updates, the Alternate License dialog is not shown. You should therefore set
the license preferences in advance.

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Getting Started

1.1.5. First Steps

The best way to get to know Material Designer is to follow one of the examples. You can find these
examples in Tutorials (p. 23).

Instructions on the use of specific features of Material Designer can be found in Material Designer
Features (p. 51).

Background information on the underlying theory behind Material Designer is available in Theory
Documentation (p. 101).

1.2. Graphical User Interface

The user interface is presented in the following parts:
1.2.1. Ribbon Bar
1.2.2. Outline
1.2.3. Options Panel
1.2.4. Results Table
1.2.5. Material Designer Options
1.2.6. Unit Systems

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 Graphical User Interface

Figure 1.1: Ansys Material Designer GUI

1.2.1. Ribbon Bar

The Material Designer Ribbon Bar defines the basic workflow for creating and analyzing a material
model. A brief description of the tools follows. For more details, see Material Designer Features (p. 51).

Figure 1.2: Material Designer Ribbon Bar for FE Models

The Ribbon Bar displays the following tools for a Finite Element-based Homogenization:

• Select: Selection tool for interacting with the graphics window.

• Change: Change type of model used for the homogenization.

• Constituent Materials: Define the materials that make up the model.

• Geometry: Define the geometry of your model.

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Getting Started

• Mesh: Define the mesh settings your model.

• Analysis Settings: Define analysis settings for your model.

• Constituents Calibration: (For the Short Fiber Analytical model only) Calibrate the properties of
the constituents against experimental data.

• Solve Constant Material: Solve for material with a fixed set of material properties.

• Solve Variable Material: Solve for material with parameterized material properties.

• Curve Fitting: (For Short Fiber Composite Models only) Run a curve fitting analysis to characterize
the nonlinear behavior of the composite material.

Figure 1.3: Curve Fitting Tool

• Update: Update the model based on new settings.

• Refresh: Refresh the input material data and potential input parameter values. This performs the
same function as clicking Refresh on the Material Designer cell in Workbench.

• Clear Generated Data: Clear all the generated data.

• Display Element Orientation: Display the orientation of the finite elements.

• Open Help: Open this Material Designer documentation.

• Exit: Exit Material Designer mode and show all SpaceClaim functionality.

Figure 1.4: Material Designer Ribbon Bar for an Analytical Homogenization

The Ribbon Bar for an Analytical Homogenization does not contain all the FE-related tools. However,
it contains the following:

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 Graphical User Interface

Setup: Setup the analytical homogenization model.

1.2.2. Outline
The Material Designer outline displays the input properties required to compute a homogenized
material. Items in the outline correspond to tools available on the Ribbon Bar (p. 5). The Context
Menu for each entry provides more detailed options.

The status icon indicates whether an item is up to date ( ) or needs updating ( ).

Outline for RVE Model

Figure 1.5: Material Designer Outline for an FE-based Homogenization

The following items are displayed for a Representative Volume Element (RVE) model:

• Materials: Define the materials that make up your model.

• Geometry: Define the RVE geometry.

• Mesh: Define mesh settings for your model.

• Settings: Define analysis settings for your model.

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Getting Started

Outline for Analytical Homogenization

Figure 1.6: Material Designer Outline for an Analytical Homogenization

The following items are displayed for an Analytical Model:

Materials: Define the materials that make up your model.

Setup: Setup the analytical homogenization model.
Settings: Define analysis settings for your model.

For Short Fiber models, an additional item Experimental Data is available.

The items under Analyses vary depending on the chosen analyses.

1.2.3. Options Panel

The Options Panel changes based on the selection in the Outline (p. 7), showing you what input
parameters are required for the Homogenization Analysis.

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 Graphical User Interface

Figure 1.7: Material Designer Options Panel

1.2.4. Results Table

View the computed material data in the results table (see examples that follow). Use the Context
Menu of each entry to copy values to the clipboard.

Note:

If more properties are computed (for instance the density), they are appended in the table.

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Getting Started

Constant Results

The following two items are available only for Finite Element-Based Homogenization:

RVE log: Click the icon to see the log messages of the RVE update.
Solver logs: Click the icon to view the Log Viewer Dialog:

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 Graphical User Interface

Click the button of a load case to open the corresponding solver log output.

Click the folder icon to open the corresponding folder.

Note:

In the constant case, you can parameterize the results in Workbench by checking the box
in the (last) P column.

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Getting Started

Raw Variable Results

Image: The raw variable results table shows a preview of each computed RVE variation. Click it
to open the image in the standard image viewer.
Include: Select whether the corresponding results are included into the generated variable ma-
terial.

The following two items are available only for Finite Element-Based Homogenization:

RVE log: Click the icon to see the log messages of the RVE update of the corresponding variation.
Solver logs: Click the icon to view the solver logs of the corresponding variation.

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 Graphical User Interface

Results

Note:

• This table shows only the design points that are used to generate a variable material.

• In case of a randomized RVE, the table shows standard deviations in addition to the
mean values.

1.2.5. Material Designer Options

You can access Material Designer specific options by clicking File then clicking SpaceClaim Options.
In the dialog box that opens, select Material Designer.

Figure 1.8: Material Designer Options

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Getting Started

• Solve in parallel: Use multiple processor cores to solve several load cases in parallel.

• Maximum number of solver processes: Set the maximum number of parallel processes for the
solver. The default setting of -1 indicates no limit on the number of processes.

• Number of threads per solve process:

• Beta options: Activate this flag to use Beta features.

Using Material Designer to compute stress-strain curves for composites and lattice structures with
nonlinear constituent materials is a Beta feature in Release 2025 R1. For information about using
this feature, see the document, Material Designer Beta Features.

Note that Design Point Specific options can be changed in Workbench under Tool > Options > Ma-
terial Designer. See Workbench User Preferences: Material Designer.

Note:

Parallelization of load cases is not supported when using license sharing.

1.2.6. Unit Systems

There are two unit systems that are interconnected and of importance for Material Designer: the
Material Designer analysis unit system and the SpaceClaim length units.

Material Designer Analysis Unit Systems

The Material Designer analysis unit system specifies the units in which Material Designer can perform
analyses:

• Macroscale units – s, m, kg

• Microscale units – s, mm, t

The stiffness results are subsequently either calculated in Pascal (Pa) or in Megapascal (MPa) depending
on whether the macro- or microscale units are active, for example.

By default, the microscale units are activated for UD composites (p. 54), random UD composites (p. 55),
chopped fiber composites (p. 56) and user defined RVEs (p. 69). Macroscale units are activated for
lattice structures (p. 52) and woven composites (p. 60). If microscale units are active, the top right
corner of the Material Designer interface will display a red µm or nm symbol.

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 Workbench Workflow Examples

SpaceClaim Length Units

The choice of SpaceClaim length units will determine whether the macroscale or microscale units are
used for Material Designer.

Material Designer Analysis Unit System SpaceClaim Length Units

Metric Imperial
Microscale units (s, mm, t) Nanometers Mils
Micrometers
Macroscale units (s, m, kg) Millimeters Inches
Centimeters Feet
Meters Feet &
Inches

Note:

The Material Designer Analysis Unit System will be used when displaying results. The
Spaceclaim length unit will be used for entering values into Material Designer fields. When
you change the Spaceclaim length units, it automatically changes Analysis Unit System to
the corresponding entry in the table above.

Changing the Unit System

You can manually change the unit system in an empty analysis with the following procedure:

1. Choose the RVE Type (p. 51).

2. Click File → SpaceClaim Options → Units.

3. Select the length unit.

Note:

Changing the unit system can lead to problems with creating or meshing geometry due
to tolerances. Switching the Material Designer unit system for a microscale based RVE is
not advised. A change in unit system is often necessary for the User Defined RVE.

1.3. Workbench Workflow Examples

The Material Designer component system can be used for basic and complex load cases and analysis.
The following sections contain some examples of common use cases for Material Designer:
1.3.1. Basic Workflow
1.3.2. Using Computed Materials in Downstream Analyses
1.3.3. Variable Material
1.3.4. Parameter Fitting

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Getting Started

1.3.5. Workflow for Woven Composites

1.3.6. Workflow for Short Fiber Composites
1.3.7.Transfer to Mechanical

1.3.1. Basic Workflow

For simply computing homogenized material data, a single Material Designer component system is
enough:

• Add a Material Designer component system in Workbench,

• Define the constituent materials through Engineering Data.

• Start Material Designer by double-clicking the Material Designer cell.

• Setup and run the analyses as outlined in Material Designer Features (p. 51).

Figure 1.9: Material Designer Component System

If you want to examine the computed data in the Engineering Application, connect the Material De-
signer component system to an Engineering Data component system.

Figure 1.10: Material Designer Export to Engineering Data

In this way, you can also export the computed materials for use in other projects.

1.3.2. Using Computed Materials in Downstream Analyses

To use materials computed in Material Designer in subsequent analyses, connect the Material Designer
component system to the Engineering Data cell of the downsteam analysis system. The computed
material will appear in the Engineering Data page and can be used the same way as built-in or user-
defined materials.

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Figure 1.11: Material Designer with Static Structural Analysis

For composite materials, you may wish to use ACP to create a composite layup and postprocess the
analysis. In this case, the following example workflow is used:

Figure 1.12: Material Designer with ACP

1.3.3. Variable Material

To use a computed variable material in downstream analyses, you must provide the field data. You
can do so by adding an External Data system to the project schematic.

The external data needs to specify, for instance, the spatial distribution of the fiber volume fraction
for a workflow with a variable UD material or the distribution of the relative density (volume fraction)
for a workflow with a variable lattice material.

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Getting Started

Figure 1.13: Material Designer with Variable Material

If you are using ACP, you do not need the External Data system. Fields can be directly defined in ACP.
In particular, the shear angle (due to draping) is directly computed and made available by ACP. In
this case, the workflow is the same as the constant material workflow.

Figure 1.14: Material Designer with ACP

See Analysis Using Variable Material Data for more information on analyses with variable material.

1.3.4. Parameter Fitting

You can define input and output parameters in Material Designer.

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 Workbench Workflow Examples

Figure 1.15: Parametric Design Workflow

A good example of computing unknown parameters is fitting an unknown property of the fiber ma-
terial to a known property of the composite material. To parameterize constituent material data, open
the Engineering Data cell and parameterize it there.

1.3.5. Workflow for Woven Composites

For woven composites, two Material Designer component systems are required. The second system
models the mesoscopic level (yarns and matrix), while the first system models the microstructure of
the yarn (fibers and matrix). The yarn is locally treated as a UD composite and its homogenized ma-
terial data is used as an input to the second system.

Figure 1.16: Woven Materials in Material Designer

1.3.6. Workflow for Short Fiber Composites

You can simulate parts made of short fiber reinforced composites by combining Material Designer
with an Injection Molding Data system. See the guide to Short Fiber Reinforced Composites Simulation
for more information on this workflow.

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Getting Started

1.3.7. Transfer to Mechanical

You can easily transfer RVE models created in Material Designer to a downstream Static Structural
system. Specifically, you can transfer the finite element model of the RVE (material properties, geometry,
mesh and element orientations) together with one of the six load cases used to compute linear
elastic material properties (p. 109). Once you have created a Material Designer system, transfer the
model by doing the following:

1. Create a new Static Structural system.

2. Connect the Material Designer cell to the Model cell of the Static Structural system. When you
create the connection, the Mechanical system will no longer display the Geometry and Engin-
eering Data cells. Material Designer now provides the system data.

Figure 1.17: Material Designer to Static Structural connection

By default, the tensile load case in the X direction is transferred to Mechanical. You can specify a dif-
ferent Load Case, as shown below, by changing the Transfer Settings for Material Designer in the
Properties pane of the Static Structural model.

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Figure 1.18: Transfer Settings for Material Designer

To successfully complete the transfer, only the RVE Model must be defined in Material Designer. It
does not matter whether you also created a Constant or Variable Material Analysis. They do not affect
the transfer to Mechanical.

When connecting a Material Designer system to a Static Structural system, the following entities
are imported and created in Mechanical:

• Constituent Materials (The materials defined in the Engineering Data cell of the Material Designer
system are automatically transferred to the Static Structural system.)

• Geometry (A mesh-based geometry is created.)

• Mesh

• Element Orientations (depending on the RVE type)

• Constraint Equations

• Named Selections created by Material Designer to apply boundary conditions. (User-defined named
selections are not transferred.)

• Boundary Conditions

When non-conformal meshing is used, contacts are not transferred. Instead, they must be redefined
in Ansys Mechanical. This happens automatically if the option Auto Detect Contact On Attach is
selected, which is the default. You will find Auto Detect Contact On Attach in the Workbench Project

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Getting Started

Page, under Tools > Options > Mechanical. For more information, see Connection Group in the
Mechanical User's Guide.

Note:

The environment temperature defined in the Analysis Settings (p. 76) tool is not transferred
to Mechanical.

In the example shown below, the transferred objects for a UD Composite appear in the Tree Outline
of Ansys Mechanical.

Figure 1.19: Imported objects for a UD Composite (no element orientations are defined)

Here, the objects for a Woven Composite are shown in two separate examples– one for a conformal
mesh and the other for a non-conformal mesh. Notice that Contacts appear under the Connections
group for the non-conformal mesh.

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Figure 1.20: Imported objects for a Woven Composite: conformal and non-conformal

The imported Mechanical model is fully defined and ready to be solved. You can review and post-
process the solution using the various results described in the Using Results section of the Mechanical
User's Guide.

Note:

It is possible to see slight differences between the Material Designer and the Mechanical
solutions, depending on the solver settings you choose in Mechanical– a direct versus an
iterative solver type, for example.

1.4. Tutorials
The following tutorials are available:
1.4.1. UD Composite Tutorial
1.4.2. Woven Composite Tutorial

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Getting Started

1.4.3. User Defined RVE Tutorial

1.4.1. UD Composite Tutorial

The goal of this tutorial is to compute homogenized material data for a UD composite. In this tutorial,
the data from Younes et. al (2012) (p. 128) will be reproduced.

Use the following procedures to compute homogenized material data for a UD composite:

Initialization
1. Open Ansys Workbench.

2. Drag a Material Designer component system to the project schematic.

Define Input Materials

1. Double click the Engineering Data cell of the Material Designer component system.

2. Define a new material for the fiber.

• Add a new material and name it Carbon.

• From the Toolbox on the left, add the Orthotropic Elasticity property.

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• Add the following orthotropic elasticity properties:

Young's Modulus 232 GPa

X
Young's Modulus 15 GPa
Y
Young's Modulus 15 GPa
Z
Poisson's Ratio 0.279
XY
Poisson's Ratio 0.49
YZ
Poisson's Ratio 0.279
XZ
Shear Modulus 24 GPa
XY
Shear Modulus 5.033577
YZ GPa
Shear Modulus 24 GPa
XZ

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Getting Started

Note:

We assume that the fiber is transversely isotropic and use the relationship .

3. Define a new material for the matrix.

• Add a new material and name it Epoxy.

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• From the toolbox on the left, add the Isotropic Elasticity property.

• Add the following isotropic elasticity properties:

Young's 5.35
Modulus GPa
Poisson's Ratio 0.354

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Getting Started

4. Return to the project schematic.

Design Material
1. Double-click the Material Designer cell of the Material Designer component.

2. Click UD Composite in the Ribbon Bar.

3. Click Constituent Materials in the Ribbon Bar.

• Assign the Epoxy material to Matrix.

• Assign the Carbon material to Fiber.

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4. Click Geometry in the Ribbon Bar.

• Set Geometry Type to Hexagonal.

• Set Fiber Volume Fraction to 0.6.

• Set Fiber Diameter to 5 µm.

5. Click Complete ( ) to create an RVE.

6. Click Mesh in the Ribbon Bar.

• Activate Use Conformal Meshing and Use Block Meshing.

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Getting Started

7. Click Complete ( ) to obtain a conformal, block structured mesh.

8. Click Analysis Settings in the Ribbon Bar.

• Uncheck the Use Periodic Boundary Conditions option. This RVE has reflectional symmetries
that allow the use of non-periodic boundary conditions without introducing boundary effects.

9. Click Constant Material in the Ribbon Bar.

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• Set the Material Name of the new material to Epoxy Carbon UD.

10. Click Complete ( ) to obtain results. You need to wait until all load cases are solved before
proceeding.

11. Review the results by clicking the Results item in the outline.

In the Results view, you can review calculated material properties such as Young's Modulus,
Poisson's Ratio, and Shear Modulus. You can select values and copy them to the clipboard using
the Context Menu or by pressing Ctrl+C.

Design Variable Material

The above procedures produced homogenized material data for a composite material. It is possible
to investigate how altering certain properties of the material will alter its final homogenized properties.
Simulate the effects of changing the fiber volume fraction using the following procedure:

1. Click Variable Material in the Ribbon Bar.

• Choose Fiber Volume Fraction as the Parameter.

• Set the parameter values as 0.2-0.7:7. This notation represents a sampling interval from 0.2
to 0.7 with 7 total samples.

• Leave all other fields at the default.

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2. Click Complete ( ) to obtain results. The calculations will take a few minutes to complete.

3. Click Generated Material in the Outline and set the Material Name to Variable Epoxy Carbon
UD. In addition, set a default Fiber Volume Fraction of 0.5.

4. Click Complete ( ) to finish the generation of the variable material.

5. Review the results by clicking the Results item in the outline.

6. Right-click the Variable Material Evaluation item in the outline and click Add Chart.

• In the chart options, activate E2.

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7. Click Complete ( ) to obtain the chart.

8. Review the visualized material in the Chart tab.

Review Materials in Workbench

Computed materials can be passed to downstream analyses by connecting the Material Designer
cell of the Material Designer component system to an Engineering Data cell. Use the following pro-
cedure to pass the homogenized material data to a downstream analysis system:

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1. In the project schematic in Workbench, add an Engineering Data component system and link the
Material Designer cell to the Engineering Data cell.

2. Right-click the Engineering Data cell of the downstream component system and select Update.

3. Double-click the Engineering Data cell of the downstream component system and review the
materials in the Engineering Data screen. The computed materials are available and can be used
in further analysis steps like any other material.

1.4.2. Woven Composite Tutorial

The goal of this tutorial is to compute homogenized material data for woven composites. In particular,
we will also study the effect of shear due to draping.

There will be two Material Designer systems: A system that models the microscale of the yarn
(fiber/matrix) and a system that models the mesoscale of the woven composite (yarn/matrix).

1.4.2.1. Initialize the Analysis

1. Open Ansys Workbench.

2. Complete the UD Composite Tutorial (p. 24) with the following modifications:

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 Tutorials

• Choose a fiber volume fraction of 0.7.

• Skip the part about variable material.

Note:

There is an alternative to this step; see step 7.

3. Add another Material Designer system to the project schematic.

4. Transfer the output Material Designer cell A3 to the Engineering Data cell B2 (drag from A3
to B2 (drag cell A3 onto cell B2).

The schematic should now look like this:

5. Update the Engineering Data cell B2.

6. Open the Engineering Data B2 and make sure that the homogenized data of first system is
there:

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7. If you skipped the first tutorial, remove the connection from A3 to B2 and define a Material
Epoxy Carbon UD directly inside Engineering Data with the values from above.

8. Define a custom material called Epoxy for the matrix with Isotropic Elasticity (Young's modu-
lus:5.35 GPa, Poisson's ratio: 0.354)

9. Go back to the project schematic.

1.4.2.2. Design the Woven Composite

1. Start Material Designer from cell B3.

2. Choose Woven Composite as RVE Type.

3. Assign the matrix and yarn material:

4. Create the Geometry:

a. Click Geometry .

b. Set the options as follows:

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Choose a fiber volume fraction of 0.55 and set the Algorithm to Flattened Lenticular (high
fiber volume fraction).

Note:

The Yarn Fiber Volume fraction should agree with the setting of the first Material
Designer system.

c. Click Complete to create the geometry.

d. The resulting geometry should look like this:

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Note:

We use an RVE where the bisectors between the yarns are the X and Y axis. The
reason is that only like this the homogenized material is actually orthotropic with
respect to the X and Y axis in the presence of shear. Compare Fabric Fiber
Angle (p. 62)

5. Create a mesh:

a. Click Mesh .

b. Set the following options:

c. Click Complete:

This results in a mesh like:

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6. Set the analysis settings:

a. Click Analysis Settings .

b. Choose the following settings:

7. Perform an analysis:

a. Click Constant Material

b. Click Complete

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Getting Started

c. Wait for the analysis to complete. This takes a few minutes.

d. Investigate the results: Select the Results object in the tree.

1.4.2.3. Study the Effect of Shear

1. Add a variable material analysis by clicking Variable Material

2. Set the following options:

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This means that we will run an analysis for 0, 10, 20, and 30 degrees of shear.

3. Click complete:

4. Wait until the analyses are done.

5. Investigate the results by clicking on the entry Raw Results:

For more information on how to perform an analysis using this shear dependent material, compare
Shear Dependent Materials in Composite Analysis

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Getting Started

1.4.3. User Defined RVE Tutorial

The goal of this tutorial is to compute homogenized material data for a user defined RVE not directly
available in Material Designer. In this tutorial, the data from [Millithaler et al. (2014) (p. 128)] for a
multi-layered laminate electric sheet will be reproduced.

Use the following procedures to compute homogenized material data for a user defined RVE:
1.4.3.1. Initialization
1.4.3.2. Define Input Materials
1.4.3.3. Prepare the User Defined RVE in Material Designer
1.4.3.4. Standard Steps in Material Designer

1.4.3.1. Initialization
1. Download the geometry file that is to be used with this tutorial from and save it.

2. Open Ansys Workbench.

3. Drag a Geometry component system to the project schematic.

4. Drag a Material Designer component system to the project schematic.

5. Right-click the Geometry component and select New SpaceClaim Geometry to open SpaceClaim.

6. Click the open file icon ( ) to load the SpaceClaim geometry file containing the RVE bodies
that you downloaded.

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1.4.3.2. Define Input Materials

1. Double click the Engineering Data cell of the Material Designer component system.

2. Add two new materials and name them epoxy and steel.

3. From the toolbox on the left, add to both materials the Isotropic Elasticity property.

4. Add the following isotropic elasticity properties:

Epoxy:
Young's 3 GPa
Modulus
Poisson’s Ratio 0.37
Steel:
Young's 207
Modulus GPa

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Getting Started

Poisson’s Ratio 0.25

5. Return to the project schematic.

1.4.3.3. Prepare the User Defined RVE in Material Designer

1. To launch Material Designer double-click the Material Designer cell of the Material Designer
component system.

2. Click User Defined in the Ribbon Bar:

3. Check that the correct units are specified in Material Designer:

• Select File in the Ribbon Bar

• Select SpaceClaim Options

• Select Units and check that Micrometers are used as length unit (Note that copying and
pasting a SpaceClaim geometry for the RVE will not work unless micrometers units are used)

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4. Select Geometry in the Material Designer ribbon bar:

5. Transfer the RVE geometry from SpaceClaim to Material Designer. To do so you can simply copy
and paste the bodies from the SpaceClaim active window to the Material Designer active window.

6. Select RVE Model () in the Outline panel and add two phases named steel sheet and
epoxy layer.

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7. Select Constituent Materials in the Material Designer Ribbon Bar.

8. Assign the epoxy material to the epoxy layer and the steel material to the steel sheet .

9. Select Geometry in the Material Designer ribbon bar.

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10. Assign the phases to the RVE bodies:

• Select the phase named steel sheet. Then select the upper and lower bodies of the laminate

(A and B in the image below). Confirm the assignment by clicking .

• As above, select the phase named epoxy layer, then select the middle body (C), and confirm

the assignment .

Note:

As all the constituent material properties are isotropic, you do not need to set coordinate
systems explicitly. In a more general case, you would need to set them at this point. See
User Defined RVE (p. 69).

1.4.3.4. Standard Steps in Material Designer

1. Click Mesh in the Ribbon Bar.

• Select Use Conformal Meshing and Use Block Meshing.

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• Click Complete ( ) to obtain a conformal, block structured mesh.

2. Click Analysis Settings in the Ribbon Bar.

• Select Compute linear elasticity and Use periodic boundary conditions.

Here, you could also activate non-periodic boundary conditions and the use of material
symmetry in XY without affecting the results, as the RVE possesses the corresponding sym-
metries.

3. Click Constant Material in the Ribbon Bar.

• Set the Material Name of the new material to Stator Material.

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4. Click Complete ( ) to obtain results.

5. Review the results by clicking the Results item in the outline.

In the Results view, you can review calculated material properties such as Young's Modulus,
Poisson's Ratio, and Shear Modulus. You can select values and copy them to the clipboard using
the Context Menu or by pressing Ctrl+C.

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Chapter 2: Material Designer Features
The features of Ansys Material Designer are discussed in the following sections:
2.1. Model Type
2.2. Assign Materials
2.3. Mesh
2.4. Analysis Settings
2.5. Experimental Data (for Short Fiber Models)
2.6. Solve
2.7. Display
2.8. Charts
2.9. Data Management

2.1. Model Type

Material Designer models materials based on either a Representative Volume Element (RVE) or an Ana-
lytical Model. In the former case, it generates and analyzes an RVE of the material’s micro-structure. In
the latter case, it uses an Analytical Model to perform the Homogenization Analysis.

From the Toolbar, you will select the Model Type for the material you want to analyze.

Figure 2.1: Model Type Toolbar

If you wish to change the Model Type after you have made your selection, click the Change icon to
return to the Model Type Toolbar.

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Material Designer Features

Figure 2.2: Change Model Type

Note:

If you transfer a computed material to a downstream Engineering Data cell and subsequently
change the Model Type and reset the settings in Material Designer, then a new material is
created in Engineering Data when you update the project. In this situation, carefully check
the material assignments.

Once you have selected an RVE model type, you should define the geometry of the model using the
Geometry item in the outline (p. 7). The following sections contain information on the different geo-
metries available.

The following RVE types can be created:

2.1.1. Lattice
2.1.2. UD Composite
2.1.3. Random UD Composite
2.1.4. Short Fiber Composite
2.1.5. Woven Composite
2.1.6. Particle
2.1.7. Random Particle
2.1.8. Honeycomb
2.1.9.Triply Periodic Minimal Surface RVEs
2.1.10. User Defined RVE

In the case of an Analytical Model Type, define the details of the model using the Setup item in the
Outline (p. 7).

The following Analytical Model can be generated: Short Fiber Composite (p. 56).

Note:

You can parameterize any aspect of the model by clicking the icon next to the input
box.

2.1.1. Lattice
Lattice structures consist of a material arranged in a repeating lattice.

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Figure 2.3: Lattice Geometry Options

• Type: The geometry of the lattice structure.

– Octet

– Diamond

– Cubic

– Cubic with center supports

– Cubic with side cross supports

– Cubic with bottom center supports

– Cubic with side diagonal supports

– Cubic with bottom center without vertical supports

– Double pyramid

– Double pyramid with cross

– Double pyramid without lateral support

– User Defined: Allows you to set your own custom lattice structure. Click the button to fully
specify the user-defined lattice.

• Volume Fraction: The fraction of space within the RVE that the lattice material occupies.

• Connecting Spheres: Insert spheres to connect trusses.

• Size: Define the size of the unit cell.

• Add Rounds: Round off the edges within the lattice structure.

– Rounds Relative Radius: The radius of the rounded off edge relative to the size of the unit cell.

• Repeat Count: The number of times that the unit cell is repeated in each coordinate direction.

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2.1.1.1. User Defined Lattices

Create a user defined lattice structure by defining points and connecting them to trusses.

• Symmetry: Specify the reflectional symmetries that the RVE should have. It will automatically
create additional trusses to meet this criterion.

• Relative Size: Specify the relative size of the unit cell in each direction. This allows you to create
non-cubic unit cells.

• Points: Specify a name and relative coordinates. The relative coordinates need to be between 0
and the specified relative size.

• Trusses: Specify the start and end point of each truss as well as a relative truss radius.

Click Export to export the definition of the lattice to a .csv file.

Click Import to import a (previously exported) .csv file containing the lattice definition.

Note:

The user-defined lattice is assumed to be a unit cell; the structure is assumed to be

periodic in all coordinate directions.

2.1.2. UD Composite
Unidirectional composites consist of fibers oriented in the same direction, surrounded by a matrix
material.

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Figure 2.4: UD Composite Geometry Options

• Geometry Type: Control the arrangement of fibers in cross section within the matrix.

– Square: Cross section of fibers within RVE has fibers arranged as the vertices of a square.

– Diamond: Cross section of fibers within RVE has fibers arranged as the vertices of a diamond.

– Hexagonal: Cross section of fibers within RVE has fibers arranged as the vertices of a hexagon.

Note:

In general, only the Hexagonal geometry type will lead to a transversely isotropic ma-
terial.

• Fiber Volume Fraction: The fraction of space within the RVE that the fiber material occupies.

• Fiber Diameter: The diameter of the individual fibers in the active unit system.

• Repeat Count: The number of times that the unit cell is repeated in each coordinate direction.

• Length Ratio XZ: The ratio of the RVE length in the X direction divided by the length in Z direction.

2.1.3. Random UD Composite

Random unidirectional composites consist of fibers with random variation in the orientation direction,
surrounded by a matrix material.

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Material Designer Features

Figure 2.5: Random Unidirectional Composite Geometry Options

• Fiber Volume Fraction: The fraction of space within the RVE that the fiber material occupies.

• Seed: The seed number against which the random fiber directions are generated.

• Mean angle of misalignment: The mean of the angles between the fiber direction and the X-Axis.

• Fiber Diameter: The diameter of the individual fibers in the active unit system.

• Repeat Count: Represents roughly the number of fibers that are in the Y- or Z-directions if the
fibers were arranged in a regular pattern.

• Algorithm: The algorithm used to generate the RVE geometry.

– Sequential Addition: Fibers are added one after each other.

– Perturbation (high fiber volume fraction): Start from a regular pattern and perturb the fibers.

Note:

The higher the fiber volume fraction and the mean misalignment angle, the more difficult
it is to generate the RVE. In fact, it is infeasible at some point.

We recommend that you use the Perturbation algorithm for high values of the fiber
volume fraction.

2.1.4. Short Fiber Composite

Short fiber composites consist of short (chopped) fibers arranged randomly in a matrix material. The
directions of the fibers are random, while seeking to attain a certain orientation tensor (p. 59). This
allows you to create models where the fiber directions are uniformly at random, as well as models
where certain fiber directions are more likely than others. In particular, you can create models where
the fibers are oriented in a plane.

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FE-Based Homogenization
Figure 2.6: Short Fiber Composite Geometry Options

The following options can be defined for Short Fiber using Finite Element Based Homogenization:

• Specify Volume Fraction/Weight Fraction: Choose whether to define the RVE by specifying the
fiber volume or the weight fraction.

• Fiber Volume Fraction: (This option appears when you select Volume fraction for Specify.) The
fraction of space within the RVE that the fiber material occupies.

• Fiber Weight Fraction: (This option appears when you select Weight fraction for Specify.) The
ratio between the weight of the fibers and the total weight of the composite.

• Seed: The seed number against which the random fiber directions are generated.

• Orientation Tensor: Specify the eigenvalues a11 and a22 of the target orientation tensor. See also
Orientation Tensor (p. 59).

• Aspect Ratio: The ratio of the length to the diameter of the fibers.

• Fiber Diameter: The diameter of the individual fibers in the active unit system.

• Repeat Count: The higher this value, the larger the number of fibers in the RVE.

• Algorithm: The algorithm used to generate the RVE geometry.

– Sequential Addition: Fibers are added one after another.

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Material Designer Features

– Sequential Addition with Orientation Optimization: Fiber orientations are adjusted using a
gradient descent method in order to better match the specified orientation tensor, similar to
[Schneider (2017) (p. 128)].

Note:

The fiber volume fraction and the orientation tensor are only reached approximately.
See the status history after the generation of the RVE geometry for the actual values. In
particular, high fiber volume fractions might not be reached when the target value is
close to or exceeds the jamming limit.

Analytical Homogenization
Figure 2.7: Short Fiber Composite Setup Options

The following options can be defined for Short Fiber Analytical Homogenization:

• Specify Volume Fraction/Weight Fraction: Choose whether to define the composite by specifying
the fiber volume or the weight fraction.

• Fiber Volume Fraction: (This option appears when you select Volume fraction for Specify.) The
fraction of space within the RVE that the fiber material occupies.

• Fiber Weight Fraction: (This option appears when you select Weight fraction for Specify.) The
ratio between the weight of the fibers and the total weight of the composite.

• Fiber Volume Fraction: The fraction of space within the composite material that the fiber material
occupies.

• Orientation Tensor: Specify the eigenvalues a11 and a22 of the target orientation tensor. See also
Orientation Tensor (p. 59).

• Aspect Ratio: The ratio of the length to the diameter of the fibers.

Note:

When you specify the Weight Fraction, you must also define the density for the matrix
and the fiber materials. Furthermore, the density must be constant and must not depend
on field variables like temperature.

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2.1.4.1. Orientation Tensor

Consider an RVE with N fibers, with direction unit vectors d(1) ,...,d(N) . The components of the orient-
ation tensor A are defined as

Note:

The sign of the direction unit vectors d(k) can be chosen arbitrarily, as it does not influence
the orientation tensor.

The orientation tensor is a symmetric tensor and its trace (the sum of the diagonal elements) is always
1. The diagonal entries fall into the range [0,1], whereas the off-diagonal entries fall into [-1/2,1/2].

Material Designer strives to create an RVE that has (approximately) a diagonal orientation tensor;
in other words, we try to generate an RVE where the principal axes of the orientation tensor match
the global coordinate system.

Then we are left with the three diagonal entries: a11, a22, a33. The values specify how closely the
fibers are aligned with the corresponding direction. For instance, if the orientation tensor is

then all the fibers are aligned in X direction. If the fiber orientations are uniform in all directions,
then the orientation tensor is

If a33 is zero, for instance for

then the fibers are oriented parallel to the XY plane.

Since the sum of a11, a22, and a33 is always 1, you can specify only the target values for a11 and
a22; a33 is computed automatically.

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Material Designer Features

2.1.5. Woven Composite

Woven composites consist of fiber material that has been woven together in two directions, surrounded
by a matrix material. For the simulation, the fibers and the surrounding matrix material are grouped
into a yarn material. The simulation is performed at the yarn level.

Figure 2.8: Woven Composite Geometry Options

• Weaving Type: The way in which the yarns are woven together.

– Plain: Weft threads pass under one warp thread and then under one warp thread.

– Twill: Weft threads pass over one or more warp threads and then under two or more warp
threads.

• Fiber Volume Fraction: The fraction of space within the RVE that the fiber material occupies.

• Yarn Fiber Volume Fraction: The fraction of space within the yarn that the fiber material occupies.

Note:

This should correspond to the fiber volume fraction of the constituent yarn material.

• Shear Angle: The angle (in degrees) that the weave is sheared due to draping.

• Yarn Spacing: The distance from one yarn to the next (from centers).

• Fabric Thickness: The thickness of the woven fabric in the active unit system.

• Repeat Count: The number of times that the unit cell is repeated in each coordinate direction.

• Align Yarn With X Direction: When selected, weft threads are aligned with the global X-direction.
Compare to Fabric Fiber Angle (p. 62).

• Algorithm: The algorithm to generate the RVE geometry. It influences both the cross-section of
the yarn and the yarn path.

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– Choose the Simplified algorithm for the most robust and quick (but also least accurate) solution.

– For high values of the fiber volume fraction, choose the Flattened Lenticular (high fiber volume
fraction) algorithm.

Note:

The relationship between the fiber volume fraction, the yarn volume fraction, and the fiber
yarn volume fraction is as follows:

fiber volume fraction = yarn volume fraction * yarn fiber volume fraction.

Recommended Workflow for Woven Composites

This example is of a twill-woven RVE definition which provides further explanation on the concepts
of fiber and yarn fiber volume fractions.

First Block
• Fiber – Fiber material

• Matrix – Resin material

Contains the UD RVE to calculate the yarn's material

properties that are later used in the woven composite
RVE (fabric).

Second Block
• Yarn – Fiber/resin from previous block

• Matrix – Resin material

The woven composite RVE that uses the previously

calculated yarn properties.

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Material Designer Features

The yarn/UD properties are obtained from an upstream homogenization. Therefore, the yarn fiber
volume fraction must match the UD RVE fiber volume fraction that is used in the previous Material
Designer cell.

The total fiber volume fraction represents the actual total volume occupied by the fibers in the whole
woven fabric, which contains yarns (made of fibers and resin) and the pure resin around the yarns
that fill the remaining volume of the cuboid RVE. Note that only one yarn is highlighted in the following
model and all the yarns are assigned the same yarn fiber volume fraction.

2.1.5.1. Fabric Fiber Angle

For woven composites, the fabric fiber angle is computed as an additional property.

2.1.5.1.1. Motivation
Unsheared woven composites have, correctly, an orthotropic material behavior in the coordinate
system aligned with the yarns (0°/90° coordinate system).

Note that there is a second coordinate system in which the woven material is orthotropic (the
one where the bisectors are the coordinate axes):

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However, as soon as there is some shear due to draping, then the material is only orthotropic
with respect to the bisector coordinate system:

Material is not orthotropic with respect to Material is orthotropic with respect to this
this coordinate system. coordinate system.

Because is not natural for the engineer to work with the bisector coordinate system, we provide
the fabric fiber angle as an additional property that allows you to transform between the two
coordinate systems.

(Note that the orthotropy of the woven material with respect to the bisectors holds true only for
balanced weaves, that is, when weft and warp yarns are identical.)

2.1.5.1.2. Definition
The fabric fiber angle is the angle between the material 1 direction (the first principal axis of or-
thotropy) and the (draped) fiber direction.

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Material Designer Features

Illustration of the fabric fiber angle:

black: material coordinate system

green: (draped) fiber direction

red: fabric fiber angle (negative in this case)

2.1.5.1.3. Consequences
If the flag Align Yarn With X Direction is activated for the woven composite creation, then the
fabric fiber angle is zero. Furthermore, the material 1 direction and the fiber direction agree, but
note that the material is in general not orthotropic with respect to this coordinate system.

This would have a negative effect on the results for sheared woven composites and therefore,
we do not recommend this option for non-zero shear.

If the flag Align Yarn With X Direction is deactivated for the woven composite creation, then the
fabric fiber angle is non-zero and the material properties are computed in the bisector coordinate
system.

If you use this material afterwards in ACP, you can nevertheless still work with the fiber directions.
ACP will compute the material 1 direction based on the fiber direction and on the fabric fiber
angle and set the section data accordingly.

2.1.6. Particle
Particle reinforced composites consist of spherical particles regularly arranged in a matrix material.

Figure 2.9: Particle Geometry Options

The following options can be defined:

• Geometry Type: Control the spheres arrangement within the matrix.

– Simple Cubic: A cubic unit cell with a sphere in the center (maximum volume fraction of about
52%).

– Body Centered Cubic: A cubic unit cell with spheres at all the corners and a sphere in the center
(maximum volume fraction of about 68%).

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– Face Centered Cubic: A cubic unit cell with spheres at all the corners and at the centers of each
face (maximum volume fraction of about 74%).

• Particle Volume Fraction: The fraction of space within the RVE that the particles occupy.

• Particle Diameter: The diameter of the individual particles in the active unit system.

• Hollow Particles: Generate hollow rather than solid particles.

– Particle Wall Thickness: Wall thickness of hollow particles in the active unit system. This value
has to be smaller than the radius of the particle.

• Repeat Count: The number of times that the unit cell is repeated in each coordinate direction.

2.1.7. Random Particle

Random particle reinforced composites consist of spherical particles arranged randomly in a matrix
material. Besides the position, also the particles size can be randomly assigned following either a
Uniform or a Log-Normal distribution.

Figure 2.10: Random Particle Geometry Options

The following options can be defined:

• Seed: The seed number against which the random particle position and possibly diameter are
generated.

• Particle Volume Fraction: The fraction of space within the RVE that the particles occupy.

• Diameter Distribution: The particle diameter distribution. Depending on the distribution type
different parameters can be specified.

– Constant: The diameter is fixed and set equal to Particle Diameter.

– Uniform: The particle diameter follows a continuous uniform distribution with values in the range
between Min Particle Diameter and Max Particle Diameter.

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Material Designer Features

– Log-Normal: The particle diameter follows a log-normal distribution whose mean and standard
deviation are specified by Mean Particle Diameter and Std. Dev. Particle Diameter, respectively.

Note:

Due to the limitations imposed by the RVE periodicity and the need to create a suitable
mesh, the particle diameter is forced to be larger than a program controlled minimum
diameter and smaller than half the unit cell size.

• Hollow Particles: Generate hollow rather than solid particles.

– Particle Wall Thickness: Wall thickness of hollow particles in the active unit system. This value
has to be smaller than the radius of the smallest particle.

• Size Ratio: The ratio between the edge length of the cubic unit cell and the average particle dia-
meter.

Note:

The particle volume fraction and the particle distribution moments are only reached ap-
proximately. See the status history after the generation of the RVE geometry for the actual
values.

2.1.8. Honeycomb
Honeycomb structures consists of cells with hexagonal shape repeated in two dimensions.

Figure 2.11: Honeycomb Geometry Options

The following options can be defined:

• Type: The type of honeycomb geometry.

– Extruded: All cell walls have the same thickness. See also Figure 2.13: Extruded Honeycomb
Geometry (p. 68).

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– Expanded: Cell walls in the ribbon direction (perpendicular to the direction of expansion) have
double thickness. See also Figure 2.12: Expanded Honeycomb Geometry (p. 67).

• Specify Volume Fraction/Foil Thickness: Whether to size the RVE by specifying the volume fraction
or the foil thickness.

• Volume Fraction: The fraction of space within the RVE that the honeycomb material occupies.

• Foil Thickness: The thickness of the foil (sometimes referred to as wall thickness or paper thickness).

• Side Length: The length of the cell edges.

• Cell Angle: The angle of the cell in degrees (60 corresponds to a regular hexagonal cell, 90 to an
over-expanded cell).

• Thickness: Core thickness of the honeycomb panel.

• Repeat Count: The number of times that the unit cell is repeated in X and Y direction.

Figure 2.12: Expanded Honeycomb Geometry

Note:

The ribbon direction corresponds to the x direction, while the expansion direction
corresponds to the y direction.

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Figure 2.13: Extruded Honeycomb Geometry

2.1.9. Triply Periodic Minimal Surface RVEs

Triply Periodic Minimal Surface (TPMS) RVEs consist of thickened minimal surfaces that repeat period-
ically in three directions. These kinds of structures are often used as infill in additive manufacturing.

Material Designer allows you to generate Gyroid and Schwarz P RVEs.

Figure 2.14: TPMS Geometry Options

• Type: The type of underlying minimal surface:

– Gyroid

– Schwarz P

• Volume Fraction: The fraction of space within the RVE that is filled with material.

• Size: The size of the unit cell.

• Repeat Count: The number of times the unit cell is repeated in each coordinate direction.

Note:

To avoid geometry and mesh generation issues, the RVE is generated from a translated
minimal surface for the Gyroid RVE for volume fractions below 10% as well as fractions

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between 65% and 75%. This should not affect the computed properties when using peri-
odic boundary conditions (which are recommended for the Gyroid).

2.1.10. User Defined RVE

A user defined RVE consists of one or more phases and each of the phases consists of one or more
solid bodies.

Set Up the User Defined RVE Type

In contrast to the predefined RVE types, you first need to provide some information about these
phases.

Name: Specify the name of the user defined RVE type.

Phase: Specify a name for each phase of the RVE.

Note:

You can get back to these options by selecting the RVE model node in the Outline.

Create the User Defined RVE

First create or copy and paste the user defined geometry and then specify the options. See Hints for
Importing Geometry for User Defined RVEs (p. 72) for more information.

Note:

A coordinate system must already exist for the body in order to select it as the Element
Orientation.

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Material Designer Features

• Name: Specify a name for the User Defined RVE.

• Phase assignment: select the Phase you want to assign, then select the corresponding solid geo-

metries in the working space and click Assign Bodies. .

• Element Orientation assignment: You can assign a coordinate system to one or more bodies.
Alternatively, you can use edge and/or surface guides to define the Element Orientation for the
elements of one or more bodies. To assign Element Orientation:

1. Click + to add a new assignment.

This will activate the tool guides that allow you to define the Element Orientation assignment.

2. Click the Select Bodies icon , then select the bodies on which you want to define Element
Orientations.

3. Set up a coordinate system, or Edge/Surface Guides:

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– Click the Select Coordinate System icon , then select the coordinate system which you
want to use for the Element Orientation assignment.

Note:

This will clear any edge and surface guides as they can not be combined with co-
ordinate systems.

– Click the Select Edge Guide icon , then select the edges that you want to use as edge
guides for the Element Orientation assignment.

Note:

This will clear any coordinate systems as they can not be combined with edge
guides.

– Click the Select Surface Guide icon , then select the surfaces that you want to use as
surface guides for the Element Orientation assignment.

Note:

This will clear any coordinate systems as they cannot be combined with surface
guides.

4. Click the Complete Element Orientation Assignment icon to finalize the Element Orient-
ation assignment.

5. If you chose edge and/or surface guides, set the element axis that you want to correspond to
the tangential vectors of the edge guide or the normal vectors of the surface guide:

– Use the Edge Guide Axis combo box to define to which axis of the Element Orient-
ation the tangential vectors of the edge guide should correspond.

– Use the Surface Guide Axis combo box to define to which axis of the Element Ori-
entation the normal vectors of the surface guide should correspond.

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You can also select an existing Element Orientation assignment and use the buttons to change the

assignment method. Click to remove the assignment.

Note:

– You don't need to specify the coordinate system for all bodies. The global coordinate
system will be used for all bodies that are not explicitly assigned an Element Orienta-
tion.

– You can visualize the resulting Element Orientation; see Display Element Orienta-
tion (p. 92).

The procedure to compute the Element Orientation in the cases of edge and surface guides works
roughly as follows:

The edges and surfaces are discretized. For edge guides, the tangential vectors at these discretized
points are used. For surface guides, the normal vectors at these discretized points are used. For
simplicity, assume that the edge guide should define the X Axis and the surface guide should define
the Z Axis.

Then, for each element covered by the assignment, the Element Orientations is determined as fol-
lows:

– The application obtains the surface normal direction (N-vector) at a location on the Surface Guide
closest to the element's centroid and aligns the specified axis (Z axis) with it.

– The application obtains the tangential direction (T-vector) to the edge at a location on the Edge
Guide that is closest to the element's centroid.

– The cross-product of the N-vector and T-vector calculates the 3rd axis (Y axis).

– The tangential, 2nd axis (X axis), is obtained by taking the cross-product of the N-vector and the
3rd axis.

In the case that only edge guides or only surface guides are defined, the application uses the surface
normal direction or the tangential direction at a location that is closest to the element's centroid
and uses this vector for the corresponding axis. The other axes are chosen arbitrarily. You should
use this only for transversely isotropic constituent materials.

Note:

For user defined RVEs, the only available parameter in a variable material analysis is tem-
perature (provided that at least one of the constituent materials is temperature dependent).

2.1.10.1. Hints for Importing Geometry for User Defined RVEs

Follow these steps to successfully import the geometry for a User Defined RVE:

• Select User Defined RVE. By default, this activates the microscale modeling.

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• If your SpaceClaim document destined for import is in microscale units then you can directly
open the corresponding geometry file.

• If you have a SpaceClaim document in macroscale units, Material Designer will not import it,
since mixing of macroscale and microscale documents is not allowed. Change the unit system
in the current document by clicking File → SpaceClaim Options → Units and change the length
units to macroscale ones. In the case of metric units, there is the following distinction:

– Macroscale units: m, cm, mm

– Microscale units: µm, nm

See Unit Systems (p. 14) for more information.

There is a shortcut to switch between normal scale and small scale units for user defined RVEs.

Click Geometry, then click one of the tool guides ( or ) to activate the normal scale or
small scale units, respectively. Note that this is only possible for an empty document.

• Open your RVE geometry and switch to the newly opened tab.

• Copy and paste the RVE geometry from your SpaceClaim document to your Material Designer
document, possibly including coordinate systems, by the following steps:

– In the Structure tab, select all bodies and coordinate systems and copy them with Ctrl+C.

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Material Designer Features

– Switch to the Material Designer document and paste them with Ctrl+V.

Notice that the bodies should be in the main part and not in components.

2.2. Assign Materials

Microscale models consist of one or more materials. You import these materials into Material Designer
from the Engineering Data workspace in Workbench. Then, in Material Designer, you assign the mater-
ials to the different phases of the model, using the interface shown below.

Figure 2.15: Assign Materials

In the example above, you would use the drop-down menu to select the materials for the Matrix and
Fiber phases. The phase options will vary depending on the Model Type. Other options are Matrix and
Yarn (for a woven model) and Lattice.

You can parametrize the material assignment by pressing the icon next to the input box. This way,
you can evaluate the effects of substituting the constituent material.

Note:

If you add a material in the Engineering Data cell, you will first need to perform a refresh
on the Material Designer cell before the new material is available in the Workbench para-
meter set (as well as in Material Designer).

Pressing the icon opens the Material Properties Dialog where you can review the material data.

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Figure 2.16: Material Properties Dialog

If the reviewed material is variable, you can change the parameters to query the material data at different
values. Note, however, that this does not affect the subsequent analyses at all.

2.3. Mesh
In order to compute the homogenized material data, the RVE must be meshed for Finite Element Ana-
lysis.

Figure 2.17: Create RVE Mesh

• Maximum Size: Maximum size of elements.

• Adapt Toward Edges: Refine the mesh toward the inner edges.

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• Use Block Meshing: When selected, use a block decomposition to generate the block structured
meshes.

• Use Conformational Meshing: Generate a conformational mesh (coincident topologies are shared
and, as a result, mesh nodes at the interfaces are shared). If not activated, general contacts are used.

• Use Periodic Meshing: Generate periodic meshes (meshes suitable to enforce periodic boundary
conditions). For this, the meshes of opposite faces of the RVE boundary must be the same.

2.4. Analysis Settings

Use the Analysis Settings Dialog to configure the Homogenization Analysis. You can select which
material properties will be computed as well as other options explained below.

Figure 2.18: Analysis Settings

• Type of Anisotropy: The type of anisotropy of the homogenized material:

– Orthotropic

– Anisotropic

• Compute Linear Elasticity: Compute the material constants for linear elasticity. For orthotropic ma-
terials, Material Designer computes engineering constants (Young’s moduli, shear moduli, Poisson’s
ratios). For anisotropic materials, the stiffness matrix is computed.

• Compute Coefficients of Thermal Expansion: Compute the orthotropic secant coefficients of thermal
expansion (only available for orthotropic materials and if the linear elasticity is computed in addition).

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• Compute Thermal Conductivity: Compute the orthotropic thermal conductivity (only available for
orthotropic materials).

Note:

If possible, the density is computed in addition to the properties above. Similarly, if possible
and if the thermal conductivity is computed, the specific heat is also computed.

• Use Periodic Boundary Conditions: Apply periodic boundary conditions (p. 111) to the Finite Element
Analysis.

• Material Symmetry: Make use of symmetry to reduce the number of necessary load cases. (This option
is not available for Analytical Homogenization.)

• Temperature: Specify the environment temperature. This temperature is used to evaluate the mater-
ial properties.

• Reference Temperature: Specify the zero-thermal strain reference temperature. This is used for
computing the coefficients of thermal expansion.

Note:

If the Temperature and the Reference Temperature are equal, the Reference Temperature
is slightly modified for the computation of the coefficients of thermal expansion.

For Analytical Homogenization, you can configure the following properties:

CTE Homogenization Method: Choose the homogenization method that is used to compute the
coefficients of thermal expansion.
Closure Approximation: Choose the type of closure approximation you want to use for the estim-
ation of the fourth order orientation tensor in the orientations averaging. See also Computation of
Material Properties (p. 103).

2.5. Experimental Data (for Short Fiber Models)

When a Short Fiber Composite Model is selected, you can define Dataset objects to store experimental
uniaxial tensile data of the composite material at different temperature values. The Datasets can later
be used to calibrate the properties of the constituents in a Constituents Calibration Analysis (see Con-
stituents Calibration for Short Fiber Analytical Models (p. 80)) as well as to characterize the nonlinear
behavior of the composite in a Curve Fitting Analysis (p. 86).

To create a new Dataset, right-click Experimental Data in the outline window and select Add Dataset
of type Uniaxial Tensile. This adds a new Dataset node in the outline and opens the dialog shown
below (see Figure 2.20: Uniaxial Dataset dialog (p. 79)) where you will enter the experimental data.

Specifically, you can enter data from uniaxial tension experiments on two types of specimens (refer to
Figure 2.19: Injection molded specimens needed for the uniaxial tension experiments (p. 78)):

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• One prepared from an injection molded plate in the direction of the suspension flow (denoted as 0°
specimen)

• And another type prepared from a similar plate perpendicular to the suspension flow (denoted as
90° specimen)

Tests and specimens should be prepared in accordance with, for example, the ISO 527 or the ASTM
D638 standards in quasi-static conditions.

Figure 2.19: Injection molded specimens needed for the uniaxial tension experiments

The following fields are available in the Uniaxial Test Data dialog, shown below, where you will enter
the experimental data:

• Name: The name of the Dataset.

• Temperature: Temperature (in °C) at which the experimental data was collected.

• a11 and a22: Here you can specify the inflow (a11) and crossflow (a22) components of the average
fiber orientation tensor. If you want to compute the average orientation tensor from the results of
an injection molding simulation, click the button From Injection Molding Simulation.

• For each specimen, you can define the Tensile Modulus (in MPa) and the True Stress (in MPa)
versus the Plastic Strain curve. Click Import True Plastic Curve to import the true plastic stress-
strain curves from a plain text file or click Import Full Engineering Curve to import the full engin-
eering stress-strain curves. When you choose the Import Full Engineering Curve option, the software
internally calculates the Young’s modulus and the plastic stress and strain. The approach used to
identify the elastic and plastic data follows the one in [Dillenberger (2020)] (p. 127). For both import
options, the data file should be in character separated value (CSV) format with values delimited by
spaces, tabs, or semicolons, with dots used for decimal points.

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Figure 2.20: Uniaxial Dataset dialog

To delete a Dataset, right-click the corresponding node in the outline window and select Delete.

2.6. Solve
You can perform different types of analyses:

• Constituents Calibration for Short Fiber Analytical Models (p. 80)

• Solve Constant Material (p. 81)

• Solve Variable Material (p. 82)

• Curve Fitting for Short Fiber Models (p. 86)

Note:

Parallel performance solving options are available to decrease solution time. See Material
Designer Options (p. 13) for more information.

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2.6.1. Constituents Calibration for Short Fiber Analytical Models

When a Short Fiber Analytical Model is selected, you can use the Constituents Calibration Analysis to
fit the Young's Modulus of the matrix material and the fibers Aspect Ratio against experimental data.

The calibrated properties can then be used in the Constant Material, Variable Material, and Curve
Fitting analyses. Moreover, the calibrated matrix material is exported to Workbench.

2.6.1.1. Set Up the Constituents Calibration

• Uniaxial Test Data: (A, in the figure below) You can select one or multiple Datasets among those
defined in the Experimental Data. If only one experimental Dataset is selected, setting the
temperature value is optional. If multiple Datasets are selected, each must be at a different
Temperature.

For each Dataset, you can click the icon to open the dialog where you can review and edit
the experimental data.

At a minimum, each Dataset should include the average orientation tensor and the tensile
modulus of the specimens in the 0° and 90° configuration. The Stress versus Plastic Strain curves
are ignored by the Constituents Calibration analysis.

Figure 2.21: Options- Constituents Calibration

• General: (B, above) Here you can specify the range of variation for the parameters to be calibrated,
namely the Young's Modulus of the matrix material and the Aspect Ratio of the fibers.

By activating the option Use calibrated properties in the other analysis, the Constant Material,
Variable Material, and Curve Fitting analyses will use the calibrated Aspect Ratio and Matrix
Modulus rather than the nominal ones.

The following situations require special consideration:

• You have multiple Datasets at different temperature values.

• And/or, the elastic properties of the matrix material are temperature dependent.

When this occurs, Material Designer's calibration strategy is based on the following criteria:

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Number of Matrix is Calibration strategy

Datasets temperature
dependent
1 No The aspect ratio and the matrix modulus are
calibrated at the given temperature value.
1 Yes First, the aspect ratio and the matrix modulus are
calibrated at the temperature value of the selected
Dataset. Then, the original temperature dependent
matrix modulus is scaled accordingly.
>1 No The aspect ratio is calibrated at the lowest
>1 Yes temperature, the matrix modulus is calibrated at
each temperature value.

2.6.1.2. Review the Results

Once you have completed a Constituents Calibration analysis, you should review the calibrated
properties in the Results panel.

For each selected Dataset, you can review the values of the calibrated constituent's properties as
well as the fit quality by comparing the experimental tensile moduli of the composite against the
computed ones.

2.6.2. Solve Constant Material

Click the Constant Material icon under the Solve menu to perform the Homogenization Analysis
and export the material to Workbench.

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Material Name: The name of the homogenized material.

2.6.3. Solve Variable Material

To create a variable material that depends on one or more parameters, click the Solve Variable Ma-
terial icon under the Solve menu to perform the homogenization analysis. The resulting parameterized
material will then be exported to Workbench.

• Sampling Strategy: Choose the sampling method. Two options are available:

– Tensor Product: All possible parameter combinations are sampled. For instance, if you sample
Fiber Volume Fraction at 0.4, 0.5, and 0.6 and the Temperature at 20 C and 100 C, then the fol-
lowing six design points are evaluated:

Fiber Volume Fraction 0.4 0.4 0.5 0.5 0.6 0.6

Temperature 20 C 100 C 20 C 100C 20 C 100 C

– Custom: Specify exactly which parameter combinations you want sampled. For instance:

Fiber Volume Fraction 0.4 0.5 0.5 0.6

Temperature 20 C 20 C 100 C 40 C

For this sampling strategy, the number of sampling points per parameter must be equal, as each
value corresponds to one design point.

When you select a Short Fiber Composite Model, you can generate a predefined sampling
strategy using the Short Fiber Wizard (p. 83).

• Parameter: Select the parameter and set the values to be sampled. Click the icon to open a
dialog box where you can edit the values more easily. For the values, you can specify either:

– A comma separated list. For instance, 0.2,0.4,0.7.

– The start and end value as well as the number of sample points. For instance, 0.2-0.7:6 corresponds
to 0.2,0.3,0.4,0.5,0.6,0.7.

Note:

When specifying the parameter values, you must use a dot when expressing decimals,
even if the Windows number format is set to using the comma as the decimal delimiter.

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The parameters that can be varied are geometry parameters (for example, Fiber Volume Fraction,
Shear Angle, etc.) and the Temperature. Temperature is shown only if any of the constituent
materials is temperature dependent.

Note:

You should specify Temperature as the last parameter because then the geometry
and mesh update can be skipped in some cases (namely when the same geometry is
solved more than once consecutively).

The following properties are available only for homogenization using the finite element method:

• Number of Samples per Design Point: The number of samples generated for each combination
of parameter values (only for randomized RVEs).

• Seed: The seed number used to generate the seeds for each RVE (only for randomized RVEs).

• Continue after Failed Evaluation: If an update of an RVE fails, continue with the evaluation of the
next RVE.

• Keep Scdocx of Failed RVE Evaluations Open: If you wish to investigate a failed RVE update, this
option will keep the corresponding document open after a failure.

• File Handling: Choose how to proceed with generated files.

Note:

• The Material Designer opens new documents to evaluate the variable material.

• If Continue after failed evaluation is active and some of the evaluations fail, then the
Variable Material Evaluation is in a partially up-to-date state (indicated by an orange
check-mark). You can continue with the generation of the material.

In addition, you can also try to redo the failed evaluations by choosing Recompute
Failed in the context menu.

2.6.3.1. Short Fiber Wizard

When a Short Fiber Composite Model is selected, you can use the Short Fiber Wizard to auto-
matically generate a suitable sampling of the orientation tensor space and combine it with sampling
of additional parameters of interest.

2.6.3.1.1. Theory Background

Up to an orthogonal transformation, the second order orientation tensor (see Orientation
Tensor (p. 59) and Orientations Averaging (p. 103)) is completely characterized by its two largest
principal values, say A11 and A22 , which satisfy the following inequalities:
(2.1)

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Figure 2.22: Sampling of the orientation tensor space

As a result, all possible orientation states fall within the triangle highlighted in the figure
above (p. 84). (Those falling outside of this region can be obtained by symmetry.) Therefore, to
characterize the homogenized material for a general orientation state, it is enough to compute
its mechanical properties for a few sample orientations in the highlighted region. See for example
[Cintra et al., (1995)] (p. 127) and [Köbler et al, (2018)] (p. 127) for further details.

2.6.3.1.2. How to use the Wizard

When Solve Variable Material is selected, the Short Fiber Wizard button appears in the Options
Panel. Click it to launch the interface.

In the Short Fiber Wizard interface shown below, you must first specify the number of sampling
points desired when sampling the orientation tensor. Then select additional parameters like the
Fiber Volume Fraction and Temperature. (Temperature only applies if any of the constituent

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materials are temperature dependent.) For each of these parameters, you can specify either a
comma separated list of values or n evenly spaced values in the range using the format a-
b:n. For example, 0.2-0.7:6 corresponds to 0.2,0.3,0.4,0.5,0.6,0.7.

2.6.3.2. Generated Material

You can specify additional options about how the variable material is exported to Workbench.

• Material name: The name of the homogenized, variable material.

• Interpolation options: You can specify the options that are used afterwards to interpolate values.
See also ????.

– Algorithm: Choose the interpolation algorithm.

– Normalize: Activate to normalize the parameter values for the interpolation.

– Cache: Activate to cache interpolation results.

– Defaults: For each parameter, specify the default value which is used for the interpolation if
this parameter is not specified.

When a Short Fiber Composite Model is selected, you can additionally specify the following option:

Use symmetries w.r.t. orientation tensor: Select this option to extend by symmetry the ma-
terial properties to the entire orientation tensor space. See below, Figure 2.23: Samples in yellow
are generated by symmetry considerations. (p. 86). You should use this option in combination
with the sampling provided by the Short Fiber Wizard (p. 83). Note, as well, that this option
only applies when both A11 and A22 are selected as parameters.

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Material Designer Features

Figure 2.23: Samples in yellow are generated by symmetry considerations.

Note:

You can choose which design points to include by clicking on the corresponding check
boxes on the Raw Results Tab.

2.6.4. Curve Fitting for Short Fiber Models

When a Short Fiber Composite Model is selected, you can use the Hill Plasticity Curve Fitting Analysis
to characterize the nonlinear behavior of the composite material. (See Hill Plasticity Curve Fitting for
Short Fiber Reinforced Composites (p. 116) in the theory chapter.)

If you perform a companion Variable Analysis (as shown in the figure below), the resulting material
properties from both analyses will be combined when exported to Workbench. In fact, the Curve
Fitting analysis is intended to be used in combination with a Variable Analysis which includes (at
minimum) the orientation tensor components as parameters.

Figure 2.24: Outline of a complete Short Fiber Composite analysis

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2.6.4.1. Setting Up the Curve Fitting Analysis

Curve Fitting requires experimental test data, specifically uniaxial test data obtained from two
specimens at 0° and 90° orientation with respect to the flow direction. (See Fitting the Material
Properties from Experimental Data (p. 121) in the theory chapter.) Enter the data for the Hill Plasticity
Curve Fitting in the tool options.

Figure 2.25: Hill Plasticity Curve Fitting options

• Uniaxial Test Data: (A in the figure above.) You can select one or multiple Datasets among those
defined in the Experimental Data. If only one experimental Dataset is selected, setting the
temperature value is optional. If multiple Datasets are selected, each must be at a different
Temperature.

For each Dataset, you can click the icon to open the dialog where you can review and edit
the experimental data.

At a minimum, each Dataset should include the average orientation tensor and the Stress versus
Plastic Strain curve of the specimens in the 0° and 90° degrees configuration. The tensile moduli
are ignored by the Curve Fitting analysis.

The dialog has two columns, Plastic Strain and True Stress (in MPa). Click Import to import
the stress-strain curves from a plain text file. The data file should be in character separated value
(CSV) format with values delimited by spaces, tabs, or semicolons and dots used for decimal
points. You can define multiple experimental Datasets, each at a different Temperature. In cases
where only one experimental Dataset is specified, setting the temperature value is optional. Click
in the tool options to add another Dataset. Click to remove it.

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Material Designer Features

Figure 2.26: Uniaxial Dataset dialog

• Fitting: Refer to B in Figure 2.25: Hill Plasticity Curve Fitting options (p. 87). You can configure
the plasticity model by specifying the Isotropic Hardening Model and the Hill Yield Model (see
Fitting the Material Properties from Experimental Data (p. 121) for further details). You can also
specify the initial values for the models coefficients. Click the Initial Values icon to open the
dialog shown below.

Figure 2.27: Edit initial values dialog

Activating the check box in the adjacent column (Fix Initial Value) will fix the coefficient to the
value specified in the Initial Value column.

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• Interpolation: (Refer to C in Figure 2.25: Hill Plasticity Curve Fitting options (p. 87).) Use the
Orientation Tensor Samples field to specify the number of sampling points when evaluating
the Hill yield criterion over the relevant region of the orientation tensor space. (This region is
highlighted in Figure 2.23: Samples in yellow are generated by symmetry considerations. (p. 86)
See also the section on the Short Fiber Wizard (p. 83).) Note that the values of the Hill yield are
then automatically extended by symmetry to the entire orientation tensor space as described in
Generated Material (p. 85). You can also specify the options used afterwards to interpolate values.
See also ????

– Algorithm: Choose the interpolation algorithm.

– Normalize: Activate to normalize the parameter values for the interpolation.

– Cache: Activate to cache interpolation results.

2.6.4.2. Review the Results

Once you have completed a Curve Fitting Analysis, you should review the computed material
properties in the Results panel.

Note:

The results of the fitting depend on the fiber volume fraction and the fiber aspect ratio
that are specified either in the Geometry Options (for an RVE Model) or in the Setup
Options (for an Analytical Model). See Parametrization of the Hill Yield Criterion (p. 118)
in the theory chapter.

Click Stress-Strain Chart for a visual comparison between the experimental and the fitted stress-
strain curves.

Figure 2.28: Hill Plasticity Stress-Strain Chart options

You can specify the following options:

• Show Stress vs Total Strain: Display the stress vs total (rather than plastic) strain curve. When
this option is active, the experimental curves are not shown. This option is available only when

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Material Designer Features

a Variable Analysis is defined and solved. (If the variable material depends on the Fiber Volume
or Weight Fraction parameter, the elastic properties are evaluated at its default value.)

• Dataset: By default, all Datasets are shown. Alternatively, you can display the results only for a
selected Dataset (corresponding to a certain temperature value).

Figure 2.29: Examples of stress-plastic strain curve

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Figure 2.30: Examples of stress-total strain curves

By default, the chart shows the fitted stress-strain curves obtained by evaluating the material
model for the values of a11 = a0 and a22 = a90 specified in theCurve Fitting (p. 87). You can use
the advanced options to evaluate the material model for different values of a11 and a22, either
predefined (Unidirectional, Isotropic 3D, Isotropic 2D) or User Defined.

Click Complete to open a new window tab with the chart.

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Material Designer Features

Figure 2.31: Stress-strain curves for different values of a11 and a22

2.7. Display
You have the ability to change the way information is displayed about your model.
2.7.1. Display Element Orientation

2.7.1. Display Element Orientation

You can inspect the Element Orientation for Finite Element Models by clicking the Element Orientation
Icon. This toggles between hiding and showing the Element Orientations. (You will first need to create
an RVE geometry and a mesh before Element Orientations can be displayed.)

To change the display settings for this feature, click Element Orientation and select Display Options
.

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Figure 2.32: Display Element Orientation Options

The Element Orientations of each body can be set either by:

• A fixed coordinate system

• Edge and/or surface guides

• The default coordinate system

For the predefined RVE types, the Element Orientation display is specified in the template. For User
Defined RVEs (p. 69) you can manually set these options. For example, the matrix phase in a predefined
RVE type is assigned the default coordinate system. However, each fiber body in a chopped RVE is
assigned a fixed coordinate system.

With the following two options, you can control for which bodies the Element Orientations are shown:

Show Default Orientations: Show the Element Orientations for the bodies which use the default
coordinate system.
Show Constant Orientations: Show the Element Orientations for the bodies which use a fixed
coordinate system.

The Element Orientation is always shown for bodies that use edge and/or surface guides.

Note:

The Element Orientation is not shown for hidden bodies.

With the following options, you can control how the Element Orientations are displayed:

Line Form/Solid Form: Use Line Form to display the Element Orientations using lines. Use the
Solid Form to display the Element Orientations with arrows.

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Material Designer Features

X/Y/Z Axis: Toggle which axes of the Element Orientations are shown. The X,Y, and, Z axis are
displayed in red, green, and blue, respectively.
Density: Control for which fraction of the elements the corresponding Element Orientation is
shown. Slide fully to the right side to display the Element Orientation for all elements.
Scale: Scale the lines/arrows of the displayed Element Orientations.

2.8. Charts
You can create charts of the generated variable material properties. To so, right-click Variable Material
Evaluation in the outline window and select Add Chart. This adds a node in the outline and shows
the following options:

Figure 2.33: Options for charts. Left: 2D chart, Right: 3D chart

First, choose the Property Set you want to plot. Depending on the Chart Type, the following tool options
are then available.

For 2D Charts (line charts), you can specify the following options:

• X Axis: Select a parameter.

• Y Axis: Select the material properties you wish to plot.

• Use Slices: Activate an additional input parameter on the slice axis. This allows you to plot multiple
lines for different values of the fixed parameters. See Figure 2.34: Chart example 1 (p. 96) below for
an example.

• Slice Axis: Select a parameter.

For 3D Charts (surface charts):

• X Axis: Select a parameter

• Y Axis: Select a parameter

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 Charts

• Z Axis: Select the material properties you wish to plot

Once your parameters and material properties are selected, you can use the advanced options to control
the parameter points where the material properties are evaluated. For each parameter you can specify:

• The values at which the selected material properties are evaluated when the parameter is active–
that is, when it is used as an axis. By default, 25 equally spaced points within the parameter variation
range are used. You can specify either a comma separated list of values or n evenly spaced values
in the range [a,b] using the format a-b:n.

• The value assigned to the parameter when it is not active. If available, this value is set equal to the
default selected in the Generated Material (p. 85). Otherwise, it is set to 0.

You can click the icon to reset these values to the default ones.

The material properties for the line and surface plot are computed using interpolation with the options
specified in the Generated Material (p. 85).

When a Short Fiber Composite Model is selected, you can additionally specify the following option
for 3D Charts or 2D Charts using Slices:

Restrict to the orientation tensor space: If the parameters Orientation Tensor A11 and Orientation
Tensor A22 are selected, you can activate this option to restrict the parameter values to the trian-
gular region as shown in the diagram above (p. 86). Also, see Figure 2.37: Chart example 4 (p. 97)
below.

Note:

When this option is active, the values of the parameters Orientation Tensor A11 and Orient-
ation Tensor A22 need to be the same for 3D Charts.

Click Complete to open a new window tab with the chart.

2.8.1. Chart Examples

Figure 2.34: Chart example 1 (p. 96): An example of a 2D Chart using the Slice Axis. All the computed
data points are shown, and you can inspect the corresponding parameter values by hovering over
them.

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Figure 2.34: Chart example 1

Figure 2.35: Chart example 2 (p. 96): Below is an example of a 2D Chart comparing the Young's
moduli as functions of the Temperature (evaluated at 50 equally spaced points in the interval [0, 200])
with the Fiber Volume Fraction value held fixed at 0.2. Here, the data points are not shown. In
general, you can hide or show a variable by clicking the corresponding legend entry.

Figure 2.35: Chart example 2

Figure 2.36: Chart example 3 (p. 97): The 3D counterpart of Figure 2.34: Chart example 1 (p. 96).

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Figure 2.36: Chart example 3

Figure 2.37: Chart example 4 (p. 97): A 3D Chart showing the Young modulus E1 of a Short Fiber
Composite model using the option Restrict to the orientation tensor space.

Figure 2.37: Chart example 4

Figure 2.38: Chart Example 5 (p. 98): For randomized RVEs, you can also visualize the raw variable
results. Note that exluded raw results are not shown.

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Material Designer Features

Figure 2.38: Chart Example 5

2.9. Data Management

You can perform various tasks within Material Designer to keep your material data up to date:
2.9.1. Update
2.9.2. Refresh
2.9.3. Clear Generated Data
2.9.4. Export to CSV
2.9.5. Export to h5

2.9.1. Update

Clicking the Update icon on the Update menu will update any downstream fields with changes
you have made. For example, if you have changed the geometry of the RVE, performing an update
will regenerate the model.

You can use the Update option in the Context Menu of any item in the Outline (p. 7) to update
only that specific item.

2.9.2. Refresh
Click the Refresh icon to refresh the input material data and potential Workbench input parameter
values. This performs the same function as Refresh on the Material Designer cell in Workbench.

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2.9.3. Clear Generated Data

Click the Clear Generated Data icon ( ) to clear the solution data from the analysis.

2.9.4. Export to CSV

Use the Context Menu of the Results entries in the Outline (p. 7) to export the computed material
data to a .CSV file.

2.9.5. Export to h5
Use the Context Menu of the RVE model in the Outline (p. 7) to export the definition of the RVE
model to an hdf5 exchange file format. This option is not available for Analytical Models.

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Chapter 3: Theory Documentation
Numerical simulation of composite structures is challenging due to the differences in involved length
scales. Consider a wind turbine rotor blade made of glass fiber reinforced composite materials: the
diameter of the glass fibers is a few micrometers, while the diameter of the turbine is 100 meters. This
is a scale difference of roughly eight orders of magnitude.

While the finite element method could be used to simulate the structural mechanics of this system
(resolving all length scales), it is not practical. The number of elements required would be astronomically
large, and computing the finite element solution would be infeasible, both on modern and near-future
computing hardware.

This scale difference is also a problem in additive manufacturing. 3-D printing allows the generation of
parts on the meter scale, with complex microstructures. The ratio of the involved length scales is
smaller than in the example of the composite blade, but still presents a significant computing challenge
with a single finite element model resolving all length scales.

The standard approach to eliminate this problem of scale in finite element analysis for composite ma-
terials is homogenization. Material properties for a composite material are averaged, rather than simu-
lating the full complex microstructure. With homogenized material data, structures only need to be
simulated at the macroscopic scale, making composite simulation significantly less computationally
expensive.

The simplest way to perform homogenization is to use an analytic approach: rules-of-mixture or mean-
field homogenization (see for instance [Younes et. al (2012) (p. 128)]). Material Designer allows you to
perform analytical homogenization for short fiber (see the section below, Analytical Homogeniza-
tion (p. 102)). A more accurate approach is finite element analysis of the microscale structure of the
material, which is the approach implemented in Material Designer in all other instances. The following
sections describe the finite element analysis approach to performing material homogenization.

• Finite Element Based Homogenization (p. 106)

• Modeling Assumptions (p. 106)

• Computation of Material Properties (p. 109)

It should also be mentioned that there is a reverse process called dehomogenization or localization. In
order to investigate why a structure fails at a certain location, analysis is shifted from the macroscopic
to the microscopic scale. On the finer level, the cause of failure is determined.

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Figure 3.1: Homogenization vs. Dehomogenization

If both length scales are fully coupled in a numerical simulation, it is called a multi-scale simulation.
The most common approach is often called FE2, as there is a separate microscopic finite element simu-
lation for every integration point of the macroscopic finite element simulation (see for instance
[Kouznetsova (p. 127)] for an overview of this approach). In general, multi-scale simulation is very com-
putationally expensive and should be avoided (if possible). Instead, Material Designer performs a single
computationally expensive preprocessing step that leads to variable, homogenized material data, and
results in a macroscopic simulation that is significantly less computationally expensive.

Following this approach, Material Designer can compute homogenized linear elastic and thermal mater-
ial properties. As a Beta feature, Material Designer can also compute stress-strain curves for micro-
structures with nonlinear constituent materials. You will find the Beta documentation here. For Short
Fiber Composites, in addition to the microscale-based approaches, you can also characterize the non-
linear response of the material by fitting a phenomenological plasticity model against experimental
data. See Hill Plasticity Curve Fitting for Short Fiber Reinforced Composites (p. 116) for more details.

In all of the simulation approaches described, there is an assumption of scale separation. The microscale
structures must be significantly smaller than the macroscale (compare also [Geers et. al (2010) (p. 127)]).
If this assumption is violated, the micro- and macroscale cannot be modeled independently. However,
this assumption is reasonable for both composite materials and additive manufacturing, and is assumed
in all computations.

Major sections in this chapter:

3.1. Analytical Homogenization
3.2. Finite Element Based Homogenization
3.3. Hill Plasticity Curve Fitting for Short Fiber Reinforced Composites

3.1. Analytical Homogenization

This section presents a summary of the analytical methods available in Material Designer for the homo-
genization of two-phase composites with ellipsoidal inclusions. Specifically, these methods can be used
to predict the thermo-elastic properties of short fiber reinforced composites.

In the following, the volume fraction of the inclusion phase is denoted by ϕ. Phases (constituents) are
denoted by superscripts, with m standing for matrix and f for fiber (inclusion more in general). The
stiffness tensors of the phases are denoted by and , and indicate their thermal
expansion coefficients, while and are the thermal conductivities.

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 Analytical Homogenization

3.1.1. Modeling Assumptions

Unless stated otherwise, all the models share the following assumptions:

• The constituents are linear elastic. The matrix is isotropic and the inclusions are either isotropic or
transversely isotropic in the x-direction.

• Inclusions are axially symmetric and identical in size and shape.

• The constituents are perfectly bonded at the interface.

3.1.2. Computation of Material Properties

The following sections describe the computation of homogenized material properties:

• Linear-Elastic Material Properties (p. 103)

• Coefficients of Thermal Expansion (p. 104)

• Thermal Conductivity (p. 105)

3.1.2.1. Linear-Elastic Material Properties

3.1.2.1.1. Homogenization of Unidirectional Composites
The Mori-Tanaka method is one of the most popular mean-field methods for predicting the
elastic properties of composites with unidirectional inclusions. Following the formalism developed
by [Benveniste, (1987)] (p. 127) (see also [Tucker, C. L. et al. (1999)] (p. 128)), the Mori-Tanaka
method provide the following estimate of the stiffness tensor of a unidirectional composite:
(3.1)

The strain concentration tensor in the inclusions is obtained from the Eshelby tensor
(3.2)

(3.3)

The Eshelby tensor only depends on the inclusion shape, its orientation, and on the matrix
elastic constants. Expressions of the Eshelby tensor for the elastostatics problem for different
type of inclusions can be found for example in [Parnell, (2016)] (p. 128). Material Designer supports
ellipsoidal inclusion types.

3.1.2.1.2. Orientations Averaging

When the fiber in the composites are not fully aligned, an orientation averaging procedure is
carried out to predict the elastic properties of the composite. Following the approach of [Advani
et al, (1987)] (p. 127) the properties of the composite are taken as an average of unidirectional
composite properties over all directions, weighted by the orientation distribution function :

(3.4)

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Here is the stiffness tensor of the composite with misaligned fiber orientations, is
the stiffness tensor of a unidirectional composite with inclusions aligned along the direction
and is the unit sphere.

Assuming the inclusions to be transversely isotropic along and the matrix to be isotropic,
the unidirectional composite is transversely isotropic along and the orientations averaged
stiffness tensor can be written as [Advani et al, (1987)] (p. 127)
(3.5)

where
(3.6)

(3.7)

denote the second and fourth-order orientation tensors, respectively. The constants B1,…,B5 are
related to the five independent components of the transversely isotropic elasticity tensor (Equa-
tion 3.1 (p. 103)) of the unidirectional composite.

The spatial distribution of the second order orientation tensor is commonly provided by injection
molding software, while the fourth-order orientation tensor is usually unknown. Based on the
second order orientation tensor, Material Designer estimates the fourth order orientation tensor
using a closure approximation. Both the smooth and fitted variants of the orthotropic closure
approximation proposed in [Cintra et al., (1995)] (p. 127) are available. In addition, a combination
of these two is provided: while being based on the fitted version, it reduces to the smooth variant
in case of isotropic or transversely isotropic orientation configurations.

3.1.2.2. Coefficients of Thermal Expansion

3.1.2.2.1. Homogenization of Unidirectional Composites
Material Designer offers two methods for the analytical homogenization of the coefficients of
thermal expansion of a unidirectional composite, namely Schapery and Mori-Tanaka methods.

Schapery's Method

Consider a unidirectional composite with inclusions transversely isotropic in the x direction. In

the Schapery's method [Schapery, (1968)] (p. 128), the thermal expansion coefficient in the longit-
udinal direction is computed as

(3.8)

and the thermal expansion coefficient in the transverse directions is computed as

(3.9)

Here the Young moduli and Poisson ratios of the matrix and fiber constituents are denoted by
E and ν.

Note that in the Schapery's method inclusions are modeled as infinitely long cylinders.

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 Analytical Homogenization

Mori-Tanaka Method

Following the formalism in [Lu P., (2013)] (p. 128), the thermal expansion coefficients predicted
by the Mori-Tanaka method read
(3.10)

where
(3.11)

and is the Eshelby tensor introduced in the section above, Homogenization of Unidirectional
Composites (p. 103).

3.1.2.2.2. Orientations Averaging

In case of a composite with misaligned fiber orientations, the orientation averaged thermal ex-
pansion coefficients are given by [Camacho et al., (1990)] (p. 127)
(3.12)

where

• the constants R 1 and R 2 depend on the stiffness tensor and thermal expansion coefficients
of the unidirectional composite

• and denote the second order orientation and identity tensors in Voigt notation, re-
spectively;

• the orientations averaged stiffness tensor is computed as described in the section

above, Orientations Averaging (p. 103).

3.1.2.3. Thermal Conductivity

3.1.2.3.1. Homogenization of Unidirectional Composites
The formalism developed by [Benveniste, (1987)] (p. 127) for describing the elastic behavior of
fiber reinforced materials can be directly extended to diffusion problems (see also [Böhm, et al
(2008)] (p. 127)). The thermal conductivity coefficients predicted by the Mori-Tanaka method then
read
(3.13)

where the gradient concentration tensor is given by

(3.14)

with
(3.15)

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You can find expressions of the Eshelby tensor for the diffusion problem for different type
of inclusions in, for example, [Parnell, (2016)] (p. 128). Material Designer supports ellipsoidal inclusion
types.

3.1.2.3.2. Orientations Averaging

The orientations averaging for a composite with misaligned fiber orientations is done similarly
as for the stiffness tensor in the section above, Orientations Averaging (p. 103). Assuming the in-
clusions to be transversely isotropic along and the matrix to be isotropic, the orientation
average of the conductivity tensor is completely determined by the second-order orientation
tensor and the underlying unidirectional conductivity tensor. See for example [Advani et al,
(1987)] (p. 127).

3.2. Finite Element Based Homogenization

Material Designer assumes that the material under consideration has a representative microscale
structure: the representative volume element (RVE). This is a small volume of the material that is still
large enough to exhibit the correct macroscopic material properties. For periodic materials, this can be
easily identified as one unit cell. In a periodic material, this unit cell repeats itself in all three coordinate
directions. Thus, it contains all the information about the material and it is sufficient to consider only
the behavior of the single unit cell.

For non-periodic materials, identifying the size of an RVE is more complicated. One approach to invest-
igate whether a considered volume is large enough to be representative is to increase the size of the
volume and investigate whether the macroscopic properties change significantly. If this is the case, the
initial volume was not large enough. If macroscopic properties remain fixed, the initial volume is likely
suitable as an RVE. For a more detailed discussion of the concept of RVE and unit cell see [Kouznet-
sova (p. 127)] or [Li, et. al (2015) (p. 127)].

The homogenization process starts with modeling the RVE. This requires the creation of a simplified
geometry, as well as the definition of material properties of the constituent materials. Subsequently,
the geometry is meshed for finite element analysis. The RVE is then exposed to several macroscopic
load cases, and its response is computed. The homogenized material data is computed from the results
of these responses.

3.2.1. Modeling Assumptions

The following sections present the modeling assumptions for the different types of RVEs available in
Material Designer. The assumptions are suitable for the desired analyses, but are not always true in
reality.
3.2.1.1. Lattice Structures
3.2.1.2. Unidirectional (UD) Composites
3.2.1.3. Random (Misaligned) UD Composites
3.2.1.4. Short Fiber Composites
3.2.1.5. Woven Composites
3.2.1.6. Particle Reinforced Composites
3.2.1.7. Random Particle Reinforced Composites
3.2.1.8. Honeycomb Structures

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 Finite Element Based Homogenization

3.2.1.9.Triply Periodic Minimal Surface RVEs

3.2.1.10. User Defined RVE

3.2.1.1. Lattice Structures

• Lattice structures are made of one isotropic linear-elastic material.

• Lattice structures are periodic.

• Lattice structures consist of trusses that are cylindric.

3.2.1.2. Unidirectional (UD) Composites

• UD composites consist of an isotropic linear-elastic matric material and an isotropic or transversely
isotropic (in 1 direction) linear-elastic fiber material.

• Fibers are infinite, cylindrical, and have the same fiber diameter.

• Fibers are perfectly aligned with the X-axis of the RVE.

• Fibers form a regular (periodic) pattern.

• Bonding between the fibers and matrix material is perfect.

3.2.1.3. Random (Misaligned) UD Composites

• Random UD composites consist of an isotropic linear-elastic matric material and an isotropic or
transversely isotropic (in 1 direction) linear-elastic fiber material.

• Fibers are infinite, cylindrical, and have the same fiber diameter.

• Bonding between the fibers and matrix material is perfect.

• The mean orientation of the fibers is in X direction.

3.2.1.4. Short Fiber Composites

• Short fiber composites consist of an isotropic linear-elastic matrix material and an isotropic or
transversely isotropic (in 1 direction) linear-elastic fiber material.

• Fibers are cylinders of finite length. The length and diameter is the same for all fibers.

• The RVE is periodic.

• Bonding between the fibers and matrix material is perfect.

3.2.1.5. Woven Composites

• Woven fiber composites consist of an isotropic linear-elastic matrix material and an isotropic or
transversely isotropic (in 1 direction) linear-elastic yarn material.

• The yarn fiber volume fraction is constant.

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• The RVE is periodic (the weaving pattern is regular and layers of woven composite are laying
exactly on top of each other).

3.2.1.6. Particle Reinforced Composites

• Particle reinforced composites consist of an isotropic linear-elastic matrix material and an isotropic
linear-elastic particle material.

• Particles are arranged in a regular (periodic) pattern.

• Particles are spherical. Their diameter is fixed.

• Bonding between the particle and matrix material is perfect.

3.2.1.7. Random Particle Reinforced Composites

• Random particle reinforced composites consist of an isotropic linear-elastic matrix material and
an isotropic linear-elastic particle material.

• Particles are spherical. Their diameter follows the specified distribution.

• The position of the particles is random.

• In case of hollow particles, the wall thickness is equal for all particles.

• The RVE is periodic.

• Bonding between the particle and matrix material is perfect.

3.2.1.8. Honeycomb Structures

• Honeycomb structures are periodic.

• The cell structure is uniform and perfect; cell walls have uniform thickness (except for expanded
honeycombs, where cell walls in the ribbon direction have double thickness), and all cells are
the same size.

• Honeycomb structures are made of one orthotropic linear-elastic material. The material 1 direction
is aligned with the cell edges, the material 2 direction is aligned with the global Z direction, and
the material 3 direction corresponds to the normal to the cell walls.

• In case of expanded honeycombs, bonding between cells is perfect. In addition, the adhesive
material used to bond the sheets and the resin possibly used for coating are not modeled.

3.2.1.9. Triply Periodic Minimal Surface RVEs

• Triply Periodic Minimal Surface RVEs are made of one isotropic linear-elastic material.

• Triply Periodic Minimal Surface RVEs are based on an (approximate) TPMS surface which is
thickened. This implies that these RVEs are periodic.

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 Finite Element Based Homogenization

3.2.1.10. User Defined RVE

A user defined RVE consists of one or more phases and each of the phase consists of one or more
solid bodies.

• Each phase consists of a linear elastic material (which can be isotropic, orthotropic or anisotropic).

• The RVE is an axis-aligned rectangular cuboid.

• All the bodies need to be directly in the MainPart of the document (no components).

• The bodies may not intersect each other.

• The connection in between the bodies as well as between the bodies and the RVE boundary
must be such that there are enough constraints for each body for each load case, in particular:

– There must be a face on each boundary face of the RVE.

– Isolated bodies in the interior are not allowed.

3.2.2. Computation of Material Properties

The following sections describe the computation of homogenized material properties:
3.2.2.1. Orthotropic Linear-Elastic Material Properties
3.2.2.2. Fully Anisotropic Linear-Elastic Material Properties
3.2.2.3. Orthotropic Secant Coefficients of Thermal Expansion
3.2.2.4. Orthotropic Thermal Conductivity

3.2.2.1. Orthotropic Linear-Elastic Material Properties

The following equations describe the computation of orthotropic elasticity constants for a periodic
unit cell. To perform this computation, 6 load cases are considered: 3 tensile tests (X, Y, Z) and 3
shear tests (XY, YZ, XZ). A corresponding macroscopic strain is applied in each case, and reaction
forces in the boundary faces of the RVE are used to assemble the stiffness matrix. Engineering
constants are then extracted.

Consider the tensile test in the X-direction. For an orthotropic material, the following relation exists:

(3.16)

If the strain in the X-direction is fixed to = 0.001 and all other strains are set to zero, the first
column of the stiffness matrix is obtained:

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(3.17)

Making use of the periodic structure, this is reached in the following way (compare also
[Li,(2008) (p. 127)] or [Li, et. al (2015) (p. 127)] for a more detailed discussion of boundary conditions
for unit cells). Assume the RVE occupies the volume . On the faces normal
to the X-axis, enforce

(3.18)

On faces normal to the Y-axis, enforce

(3.19)

On faces normal to the Z-axis, enforce

(3.20)

In addition to these periodicity conditions, rigid body motions must also be prevented. This is done
by enforcing

(3.21)

There are alternatives (p. 111) to these periodic boundary conditions. Unless there exist enough
symmetries, these alternatives lead to boundary effects. On periodic structures, periodic boundary
conditions should be used.

To compute macroscopic stresses, the forces on the top faces are integrated. Consider . The force
in the X-direction at the face is integrated. is obtained by normalizing with the face area.
and are obtained similarly. The entries for , , and in the stiffness matrix are easily
obtained.

By repeating the steps for all the other load cases (see Periodic Boundary Conditions (p. 111)), all
the entries for the stiffness matrix are obtained. The stiffness matrix is inverted to obtain the com-
pliance matrix:
(3.22)

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 Finite Element Based Homogenization

Finally, the engineering constants , , , , , , , , and are computed from

the relationship

(3.23)

3.2.2.1.1. Periodic Boundary Conditions

For completeness, the boundary conditions used in the different load cases are presented here
as well. In each load case, one quantity of , , , , , and is set to a predefined value
(0.001) and all the other quantities are set to 0.

On the faces normal to the X-axis, enforce

(3.24)

On the faces normal to the Y-axis, enforce

(3.25)

On the faces normal to the Z-axis, enforce

(3.26)

To avoid rigid body motions, enforce

(3.27)

3.2.2.1.2. Non-Periodic Boundary Conditions

For the tensile tests, one quantity of , , and is nonzero, all the others are set to zero.

On the faces normal to the X-axis, enforce

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(3.28)

On the faces normal to the Y-axis, enforce

(3.29)

On the faces normal to the Z-axis, enforce

(3.30)

For the shear XY case, the boundary conditions are set as follows (with ).

On faces normal to the X-axis, enforce

(3.31)

On faces normal to the Y-axis, enforce

(3.32)

On faces normal to the Z-axis, enforce

(3.33)

The boundary conditions for shear XZ can be obtained by switching the roles of y and z.

The boundary conditions for shear YZ can be obtained by switching the roles of x and y (starting
from the shear XZ case).

3.2.2.2. Fully Anisotropic Linear-Elastic Material Properties

The procedure to calculate fully anisotropic linear-elastic material properties is similar to the one
used to compute orthotropic linear-elastic material properties (p. 109). The primary difference is that
the full stiffness matrix must be computed. Still, each load case yields one column of the stiffness
matrix. In contrast with the orthotropic linear elastic computations, more integrated force results
must be extracted. For instance, in the tensile tests, both the normal components of the forces on
the boundary faces and the tangential components are extracted and used to compute entries in

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 Finite Element Based Homogenization

the stiffness matrix. For the anisotropic linear-elastic case, engineering constants are not determined.
The entire stiffness matrix is the primary result for this material type.

Note:

Non-periodic boundary conditions cannot be used for anisotropic linear-elastic materials,

as they will yield incorrect results. For example, all the tangential forces on the boundary
would be zero by definition for the tensile test (in x). This would lead to , , and
being zero, which is obviously incorrrect for an anisotropic material.

3.2.2.3. Orthotropic Secant Coefficients of Thermal Expansion

The following equations describe the computation of orthotropic secant coefficients of thermal
expansion. To perform this computation, one load case is needed in addition to the 6 load cases
needed for computation of the orthotropic elasticity constants.

For a orthotropic linear elastic material with thermal strain, the strain is given by:
(3.34)

where the thermal strain is given by:

(3.35)

If we now fix the strain and enforce an increase of the temperature by from the zero-
thermal-strain reference temperature, we obtain:

(3.36)

Inserting the definition of the thermal strain, this simplifies to:

(3.37)

The values of the stresses are obtained by integrating and normalizing the force reactions on
the boundary of the RVE. The stiffness matrix [D] is known from the other 6 load cases. From those
values, we can compute the secant coefficients of thermal expansion.

It only remains to specify how the boundary conditions are actually enforced, which is done in the
following sections.

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3.2.2.3.1. Periodic Boundary Conditions

To enforce a vanishing macroscopic strain we enforce the following conditions:

On the faces normal to the X-axis, enforce:

(3.38)

On the faces normal to the Y-axis, enforce:

(3.39)

On the faces normal to the Z-axis, enforce:

(3.40)

To avoid rigid body motions, enforce

To enforce a thermal strain, we fix the zero-strain reference temperature and raise the temperature
by a small fixed .

3.2.2.3.2. Non-Periodic Boundary Conditions

To enforce a vanishing macroscopic strain we enforce the following conditions:

On the faces normal to the X-axis, enforce:

(3.41)

On the faces normal to the Y-axis, enforce:

(3.42)

On the faces normal to the Z-axis, enforce:

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 Finite Element Based Homogenization

(3.43)

To enforce a thermal strain, we fix the zero-strain reference temperature and raise the temperature
by a small fixed .

3.2.2.4. Orthotropic Thermal Conductivity

The following equations describe the computation of orthotropic thermal conductivity. To perform
this computation, 3 load cases are needed, each of which applies a temperature gradient in X, Y,
and Z direction, respectively.

For a material with orthotropic thermal conductivity, Fourier's law specifies the following relation
between the heat flux and the temperature gradient :

(3.44)

where [D] is the conductivity matrix:

(3.45)

If we now apply a fixed temperature gradient in x direction, that is, if has a fixed value and

, , we obtain

(3.46)

We can solve for to obtain:

(3.47)

By integrating and normalizing the heat flux on the boundary face normal to X-axis, we can easily
obtain and thus, we get the thermal conductivity in X direction .

In a similar manner, we can also obtain and .

It remains to specify how we enforce the fixed temperature gradients, which we will do in the fol-
lowing sections.

3.2.2.4.1. Periodic Boundary Conditions

In each load case one of the quantity of , , and (the components of the temperature
gradient) is set to a predefined value and all the other quantities are set to 0.

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On the faces normal to the X-axis, enforce

(3.48)

On the faces normal to the Y-axis, enforce

(3.49)

On the faces normal to the Z-axis, enforce

(3.50)

To fully constrain the model, enforce

(3.51)

3.2.2.4.2. Non-Periodic Boundary Conditions

For the load case with temperature gradient in X-direction, we enforce only boundary conditions
on the faces normal to the X-axis and they are given by

(3.52)

with a non-zero .

For the load case with temperature gradient in Y-direction, we enforce only boundary conditions
on the faces normal to the Y-axis and they are given by

(3.53)

with a non-zero .

For the load case with temperature gradient in Z-direction, we enforce only boundary conditions
on the faces normal to the Z-axis and they are given by

(3.54)

with a non-zero .

3.3. Hill Plasticity Curve Fitting for Short Fiber Reinforced Composites
This section describes the constitutive model and the fitting strategy used in Material Designer to
characterize the nonlinear behavior of short fiber reinforced composites.

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 Hill Plasticity Curve Fitting for Short Fiber Reinforced Composites

3.3.1. Material Modeling

Material Designer determines homogenized linear elastic material properties using a micro-mechan-
ical model, either an analytical model or one based on finite elements. On the other hand, it employs
a phenomenological model to predict the nonlinear deformation behavior of short fiber reinforced
composites. In this approach, the material is considered directly from a macroscopic point of view. A
suitable constitutive model is assumed, and its parameters are determined using experimental data.

More specifically, Material Designer models the nonlinear response of short fiber reinforced composites
using an anisotropic Hill plasticity model combined with an isotropic hardening law. In doing so, the
following assumptions are made:

1. Viscoelastic effects are neglected.

2. Strain rate dependence (visco-plasticity) is not considered in the plasticity model– that is, the
resulting material model is suitable for simulations in quasi-static conditions.

3. The yield surface is considered anisotropic, while the hardening law is assumed to be isotropic.

For a detailed experimental characterization of this kind of composite, see for example [Launay,
2011 (p. 127)] and [Dillenberger, 2020 (p. 127)].

3.3.1.1. Plasticity Model

Refer to the Ansys Mechanical APDL Material Reference for a general background.

The constitutive models for elastic-plastic behavior start with a decomposition of the total strain
into elastic and plastic parts (ignoring thermal strains)
(3.55)

The stress is proportional to the elastic strain

(3.56)

and the evolution of plastic strain is a result of the plasticity model. The essential characteristics
of the plastic constitutive models are:

1. The yield criterion that defines the material state at the transition from elastic to elastic-plastic
behavior
(3.57)

2. The hardening rule that gives the evolution in the yield criterion during plastic deformation

3. The flow rule that determines the increment in plastic strain from the increment in load
(3.58)

where is the plastic multiplier and is the plastic potential.

Next under consideration is an anisotropic Hill yield criterion combined with an isotropic hardening
law and an associative flow rule– that is, we assume the plastic potential coincides with the yield
function .

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3.3.1.2. Hill Yield Criterion

The material is assumed to have three orthogonal planes of symmetry. Assuming the material co-
ordinate system is perpendicular to these planes of symmetry, the Hill yield criterion reads [Hill,
1983 (p. 127)]
(3.59)

where is the equivalent (also called effective) stress

(3.60)

and is the yield stress that can, in general, evolve as a function of some material internal variables.
(See Isotropic Hardening (p. 121) below.)

The equivalent stress can likewise be expressed in matrix form as

(3.61)

where the plastic compliance matrix is given by

(3.62)

The coefficients in this yield criterion are defined as

(3.63)

The directional yield ratios are related to the isotropic yield stress parameter by

(3.64)

3.3.1.3. Parametrization of the Hill Yield Criterion

Two different parametrizations of the Hill yield criterion with respect to the principal values of the
orientation tensor are available:
3.3.1.3.1. Phenomenological Parametrization
3.3.1.3.2. Parametrization Based on Orientation Averaging

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 Hill Plasticity Curve Fitting for Short Fiber Reinforced Composites

3.3.1.3.1. Phenomenological Parametrization

Following [Launay 2013 (p. 127)], we adopt the following phenomenological parametrization of
the Hill yield criterion:

(3.65)

where

• denotes the i-th eigenvalue of the second order fiber orientation tensor

• is a parameter describing the sensitivity of the yield criterion to the orientation distribution

• is a regularization parameter.

Note that the regularization term was not present in the original model by [Launay 2013 (p. 127)],
in which case no plastic flow can develop along the fiber direction of a unidirectionally aligned
composite– that is, for . Since this assumption does not hold for short fiber reinforced
composites, the term is added here, where the constant

(3.66)

depends on the volume fraction and the aspect ratio of the fibers.

The directional yield ratios then read

(3.67)

Some comments are in order:

• The yield ratios in shear direction are independent of the fiber orientation.

• For , which is in the limit of high fiber volume fraction and/or high fiber aspect ratio, the
expression for the yield ratios in normal direction reduces to the original one in [Launay
2013 (p. 127)]. See the figure (p. 120) below.

• For , it reduces to the von Mises Yield criterion.

• For a generic and a completely random fiber orientation distribution up

to a scaling factor, it reduces to the von Mises criterion in the limit of .

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Theory Documentation

Figure 3.2: Effect of the aspect ratio, fiber volume fraction, and orientation sensitivity
parameter on the yield ratio in normal direction

3.3.1.3.2. Parametrization Based on Orientation Averaging

Assume that the Hill yield strength of a unidirectional short fiber composite is known. To predict
the strength of a composite with arbitrary fiber orientations, we can follow an approach similar
to that used for the homogenization of linear elastic properties (p. 103).

Let denote the Hill strength tensor of a unidirectional composite with inclusions aligned
along the direction . Following [Van Hattum et al., 1999] (p. 128), we rewrite the yield criterion
(Equation 3.59 (p. 118) to Equation 3.61 (p. 118)) in strain space:
(3.68)

where and is the stiffness tensor of the unidirectional composite.

The strength properties of a composite with arbitrary fiber orientations are computed as an average
of unidirectional composite properties over all directions, weighted by the orientation distribution
function
(3.69)

The tensor admits the same representation as in Equation 3.5 (p. 104) and can be easily
computed in terms of the second and fourth-order fiber orientation tensors. The final orientation
averaged yield strength tensor (in stress form) is obtained as
(3.70)

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 Hill Plasticity Curve Fitting for Short Fiber Reinforced Composites

This procedure relies on the assumption of knowing the strength of the unidirectional composite.
In such case, the Hill yield tensor is transversely isotropic and only depends on three inde-
pendent parameters: the yield stress in the longitudinal and transverse directions ( and ,
respectively), and the longitudinal shear stress . For instance, for a unidirectional composite
with fibers aligned along the material 1 direction, the yield stresses in Equation 3.64 (p. 118) are
given by

The values of , , and can be, for instance, predicted from micro-mechanical considerations
(see for example [Van Hattum et al., 1999 (p. 128)]. In Material Designer, they are reverse-engineered
from experimental stress-strain curves as described in Hill Yield Criterion (p. 123).

3.3.1.4. Isotropic Hardening

The evolution of the yield stress in Equation 3.59 (p. 118) can be modeled using different isotropic
hardening laws:

• Voce nonlinear isotropic hardening:

(3.71)

See for Rate-Independent Plasticity in the Material Reference further details. The parameters ,
, , and are fitting parameters.

• Multilinear isotropic hardening: The multilinear hardening behavior is described by a piece-

wise linear stress-plastic strain curve, see Rate-Independent Plasticity in the Material Reference
for further details. The plastic strain and stress values are directly taken from the experimental
data.

• Inverse polynomial nonlinear isotropic hardening:

(3.72)

as proposed by [Schmachtenberg, 1985] (p. 128) and [Dillenberger, 2020] (p. 127). The parameters
, and are fitting parameters. However, since this hardening law is not available in the
Mechanical APDL solver, it is then approximated using a multilinear isotropic hardening model.

In the equations above, denotes the accumulated equivalent plastic strain.

3.3.2. Fitting the Material Properties from Experimental Data

The following parameters of the constitutive model (described in the above section Material Model-
ing (p. 117)) must be fitted against experimental data:

• The parameters entering the Hill yield criterion

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Theory Documentation

• The parameters of the isotropic hardening model

To this end, stress-strain curves from uniaxial tension experiments on two types of specimens must
be collected: one prepared from an injection molded plate in the direction of the suspension flow
and another type prepared from a similar plate perpendicular to the suspension flow. See the fig-
ure (p. 122) below.

Since the present constitutive model ignores rate-dependent effects due to polymer viscosity, exper-
iments should be performed at very low test speeds (quasi-static testing).

In addition, we assume the average second-order fiber orientation tensor in the injection molded
plate is known. The fiber orientation field can be obtained one of two ways: by microscopic computed
tomography (CT) scans or by injection molding simulation. When defining a cartesian coordinate
system as shown in the figure (p. 122) below, we assume the first principal fiber direction is aligned
with the x axis (along the flow direction) and the second principal fiber direction is aligned with the
y axis (in plane, transversely to the flow). We denote the corresponding eigenvalues by and .

The fitting process is split into two sequential steps: First, we determine the parameters of the Hill
yield criterion and then calibrate the isotropic hardening model. To this end, we first need to derive
an expression for the equivalent accumulated plastic strain.

Figure 3.3: Injection molded specimens needed for the uniaxial tension experiments

3.3.2.1. Equivalent Stress and Plastic Strain for Uniaxial Tensile Loading

The starting point to derive an expression for the equivalent plastic strain is the plastic work
equivalence
(3.73)

In the case of uniaxial tensile loading (using a material coordinate system as in Figure 3.3: Injection
molded specimens needed for the uniaxial tension experiments (p. 122)).

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 Hill Plasticity Curve Fitting for Short Fiber Reinforced Composites

(3.74)

so that the left hand side of Equation 3.73 (p. 122) simplifies to . Similarly, the equi-
valent stress Equation 3.61 (p. 118) simplifies to
(3.75)

On the other hand, using the flow rule, Equation 3.58 (p. 117), with , we can relate the plastic
strain increment to the plastic multiplier
(3.76)

Inserting Equation 3.76 (p. 123) into the plastic work equivalence, Equation 3.73 (p. 122), it follows
that . Moreover, in case of uniaxial tensile loading, the first component of the flow rule,
Equation 3.76 (p. 123), yields the following relation:

(3.77)

In summary, for a uniaxial tensile load, the equivalent stress and equivalent accumulated plastic
strain read:
(3.78)

where and are the experimental stress and plastic strain. See [Ottosen 2005 (p. 128), chapter
12] for further details.

3.3.2.2. Hill Yield Criterion

The first parameter in the Hill criterion that needs to be calibrated is the orientation sensitivity
parameter . We determine so that it minimizes the distance between the equivalent stress-strain
curves in the two testing configurations, that is

(3.79)

where the parallel and perpendicular symbols denote quantities belonging to the 0° and 90° speci-
men configurations respectively. Specifically, for the calculation of the equivalent stress and plastic
strains, we use the following yield ratios

(3.80)

where and are the principal values of the average orientation tensor in the loading direction
for the 0° and 90° specimens.

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Theory Documentation

Determining the orientation sensitivity parameter is enough to fully define the Phenomenological
yield model. For the Orientation Averaged model, the yield stresses , , and of the unidirec-
tional composite need to be specified. They are determined with an optimization procedure so that
the corresponding orientation averaged yield strength tensor Equation 3.70 (p. 120) matches the
experimental yield strengths in the 0° and 90° configurations.

3.3.2.3. Isotropic Hardening

The parameters of the isotropic hardening model are calibrated by fitting them against the stress-
strain curve in the 0° configuration. The procedure depends on the hardening law:

• Voce nonlinear isotropic hardening: The parameters , , , and are the solutions to the
least squares minimization problem

(3.81)

with defined in Equation 3.71 (p. 121). For additional information, see the Material Curve-Fitting
chapter in the Mechanical APDL Material Reference.

• Multilinear isotropic hardening: Stress-plastic strain values are taken from the equivalent stress
- equivalent plastic strain curve in the 0° configuration.

• Inverse polynomial nonlinear isotropic hardening: The parameters and are determined
as solutions of a linear regression problem [Dillenberger, 2020 (p. 127)].

(3.82)

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Chapter 4: Best Practices
The generation and evaluation of RVEs is sometimes tricky. Here are some common pitfalls and possible
workarounds (also note the items listed in Known Limitations (p. 2)).

4.1. Lattice structures

Adding rounds to the lattice structure makes it more difficult to generate the geometry and to mesh
it.

• If the geometry creation fails:

– Try creating the geometry without rounds.

– Try decreasing the round radius.

• If the meshing fails:

– Try to deactivate the periodic meshing (if enabled).

4.2. Woven composites

If the geometry creation or the meshing fails, try using the “Simplified” algorithm as this one is much
more robust and quicker. It has an effect on the results, but in many cases it is only moderate.

• If meshing fails, try decreasing the mesh width.

• Try to deactivate the periodic meshing (if enabled).

4.3. Short Fiber Composites

Note, the higher the fiber volume fraction and aspect ratio, the more difficult it is to generate the RVE
Geometry. At some point it becomes infeasible. In such cases, you can resort to the Analytical Model.

• If meshing fails, try to deactivate periodic meshing and/or decrease the mesh width.

• Enabling the Block Meshing option is not advisable for this RVE type.

4.4. Misaligned UD Composites

• If the geometry creation fails for high fiber fractions, try using the "Perturbation" algorithm.

• If meshing fails, try to deactivate periodic meshing and/or decrease the mesh width.

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Best Practices

4.5. Random Particle Reinforced Composites

Note that the higher the particle volume fraction is, the more difficult it is to generate the geometry.
In particular, it is infeasible at some point.

• Enabling the Block Meshing option is not advisable for this RVE type.

• If meshing fails, try deactivating periodic meshing and/or decreasing the mesh width.

4.6. Triply Periodic Minimal Surface RVEs

• Enabling the Block Meshing option is not advisable for this RVE type.

• For Gyroid RVEs, the use of periodic boundary conditions is recommended.

4.7. User-Defined RVEs

For accurate geometries and correctly applied boundary conditions, ensure the following:

• That the faces of the RVE's outer boundary are normal to the axis directions.

• That the outer boundary's edges are lying exactly on the neighboring faces. To fix inexact edges,
use the Inexact Edges tool from the Repair tab.

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Chapter 5: References
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4. Camacho, C.W., Tucker, C.L., Yalvaç, S. & McGee, R.L. (1990). Stiffness and thermal expansion predictions
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15. Lu, P. (2013). Further studies on Mori-Tanaka models for thermal expansion coefficients of composites.
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17. Ottosen, N.S., Ristinmaa, M. (2005) The Mechanics of Constitutive Modeling. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

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