Objective: Perform Detailed Sizing with Effective Laminates.
An Effective Laminate is a Composite Material that approximates the behavior of a Laminate with specified ply materials and percentages. Effective Laminates maintain many of the desirable characteristics of Composite Laminates, such as the ability to tailor the directional stiffness and strength. However, they do not require an explicit definition of the ply sequence. This makes them ideal for fast-paced, preliminary sizing and trade studies - as well as an informed first-step to a higher fidelity sizing process, such as Sizing with Laminate Families.
Effective Laminates are referenced by the Material field of the Design Property. So, to Size with them, a Design Property must be created and assigned to desired Zones. See Create a Design Property. A few general recommendations for properly filling out the Design Property (regardless of concept) for this process:
-
Set the Material mode to 'Composite' (if applicable).
-
Set the Sizing Level to Zone (rather than element).
-
Sizing Mode should be set to Detailed Sizing.
-
Any Ply Angle % and Layup Rules should be enforced here.
Assign this Design Property to all desired Zones.
There are several ways to generate Effective Laminates. See Generate Effective Laminates.
For this process, we recommend running EL generation from the Design Property form. In doing so, all generated Effective Laminates will automatically populate the corresponding Material variable (rather than having to do so manually). Once this process is finished, your Design Property should look something like this:
It is often useful when Sizing with Effective Laminates to set Sizing bounds with respect to plies, rather than thickness. Do so by toggling the dropdown option to the left of each variable name, as shown in the image above.
Make sure all Zones have a Load Property and an Analysis Property. Select the Zones with the Effective Laminate Design Property and Size them.
HyperX has several tools for visualizing and digesting Sizing results. See Tools for Viewing Results for an overview. For this type of Sizing, the Legend is most commonly used. Some of the more useful Legend plots can be found under Sizing Results. See:
-
Sizing Results > Laminates > Total Ply Count (ply count results on each zone)
Fabrication Rules
The Fabrication Rules form allows users to specify full Structure Plies - Plies that must always exist (either Zones Sized with this Design Property, Laminate Families being generated, or Discrete Laminates being generated).
Ply Angle Limits
The Ply Angle Limits Form is used to set constraints on the Laminates that may be generated or considered when Sizing.
As mentioned above, the results attained by Sizing with Effective Laminates are typically a good, informed starting point for higher fidelity Sizing processes. The optimum Ply Angle Percentages and Thicknesses per Zone can be used for:
-
Laminate Family Generation (recommended).