This release of Ansys Composite PrepPost (ACP) contains all capabilities from previous releases. The following sections present the new features, enhancements, and known limitations for ACP in Release 2024 R2.
ACP includes new features and enhancements at Release 2024 R2 in the following areas:
- 1.1. Support for Unicode
- 1.2. Composite Failure Tool in Mechanical
- 1.3. PyDPF Composites
- 1.4. Composite Failure Criteria Migration from ACP (Post) to Mechanical
- 1.5. Sectional Properties
- 1.6. Scripting of Composite Failure Criteria in Mechanical
- 1.7. CAD Geometries
- 1.8. Enhanced Definition of Reference Directions
- 1.9. Lay-up Extrusion of Solid Models
- 1.10. Bounding Box
- 1.11. PyACP (Beta) Joining PyAnsys
- 1.12. VTK Upgrade
- 1.13. Retirement of ACP (Post)
ACP and the composite workflows in Workbench now support Unicode (UFT-8) for object names and paths. ACP can now be used in combination with most common language settings. There are some limitations in combination with Mechanical APDL that are documented in Known Limitations in the ACP User's Guide.
The new Show On Reference Surface option is available for the result plots of the Composite Failure Tool. It projects the failure values and modes of a solid model onto its reference surface. This ensures that the critical values become visible even if they are inside the solid model.
This functionality already exists in ACP (Post) and is now implemented in Mechanical because of the migration of ACP (Post) to Mechanical.
The Python module for the postprocessing of composite structures has several improvements:
The failure results of a solid model can be projected onto the reference surface to ensure that the critical values are visible. For a demonstration of this reference surface plot feature, see the Postprocess an assembly example.
Layered elements can now be processed independently from the preprocessing step of ACP. In this case, the section definitions are loaded from the RST file in Mechanical APDL. For more information, see the Failure analysis of an MAPDL (RST) model example.
The newly added filter and averaging operators allow you to process ply-wise results. The usage of different filters and averaging strategies is shown in the Filter result data by different criteria example.
Composite Failure Criteria defined in ACP (Post) can now be easily transferred to Mechanical using the new Migration Helper tool. This eases the phasing out of ACP (Post) ahead of its retirement in the 2025 R1 release. For more information on the Migration Helper tool, see ACP (Post) to Mechanical Migration in the ACP User's Guide.
Sectional properties such as elastic stiffness (EA) and torsional stiffness (GJ) are used to quantify a composite structure or to replace a shell or solid model with beam elements of equivalent properties. The computation of sectional properties is implemented in the Section Cut feature. It computes the full 6x6 stiffness matrix which can be used among others in combination with the Preintegrated Composite Beam in Mechanical APDL (BEAM188 and BEAM189).
Composite Failure Criteria can now be created through the scripting API in Ansys Mechanical. This facilitates automated postprocessing of composite models. For more information, see Ansys.ACT.Automation.Mechanical.Results.CompositeFailureResults Namespace in the ACT API Reference Guide.
The associativity of CAD Geometries in ACP is improved to better support renaming. This leads to a minor change in the scripting API, and Python scripts for ACP may need to be adjusted. Existing ACP models are upgraded automatically. For more details, see ????.
The definition of the material reference directions through the Oriented Selection Set has been improved. The new property Rotation Angle allows you to rotate the reference directions with respect to the orientation normal. Some examples of using this feature include defining reference directions perpendicular to an edge or converting cylindrical directions into axial directions.
The new Skip Elements Without Plies option is added to the Solid Model extrusion algorithm. When this option is enabled, elements without a lay-up are automatically ignored during the extrusion. As a result, no drop-off elements are created between the elements with and without plies. You can use this option, for example, when holes are filled in the CAD geometry to improve the mesh quality but those filled areas should be ignored in the solid model.
The bounding box of Scenes has been refactored to better visualize the dimensions of the model.
Introducing PyACP: You can now use ACP preprocessing features as a public Python module, PyACP, in a standard Python environment outside of Workbench. PyACP can be used in combination with the PyAnsys modules PyMAPDL and PyDPF Composites, which enables the implementation of automated simulation workflows such as optimization and parameter studies. This is a beta release since some features of the standard ACP application such as Solid Model, Imported Solid Model, and Sampling Point are not available yet. For more information on PyACP, see its documentation and examples.
If you have any questions or feature requests, contact the composites team at composites@ansys.com or create an issue on PyACP's GitHub.
The latest version of VTK is now used in ACP, which improves visualization and performance.
ACP (Post) is in maintenance mode and is scheduled for complete removal in the 2025 R1 release. Ansys recommends you start using Ansys Mechanical for postprocessing composite simulations. The Composite Failure Tool, the Composite Sampling Point Tool, and the Envelope Solution are already available in Ansys Mechanical.
For scripting, you will find a Python library for postprocess composite simulations at https://pypi.org/project/ansys-dpf-composites.
For questions or concerns, contact the composites team at composites@ansys.com.
General ACP and release-specific limitations can be found in Known Limitations in the ACP User's Guide.