The documents listed below form the Ansys Mechanical APDL product documentation set. They include descriptions of the procedures, commands, elements, and theoretical details needed to use Mechanical APDL. A brief description of each document follows.
Mechanical APDL as a Server User's Guide: Describes the set of tools and functionality that allows local or remote client applications to access and interact with a running session of Mechanical APDL.
Advanced Analysis Guide: Discusses techniques commonly used for complex analyses or by experienced users, including manual rezoning, nonlinear adaptivity, initial state, submodeling, ocean loading, and more.
Acoustic Analysis Guide: Describes how to perform a modal, time-harmonic, and transient acoustic analysis to simulate the generation and propagation properties of either the coupled acoustic-structural interaction (FSI) or the uncoupled pure acoustic wave in a given environment.
Ansys Parametric Design Language Guide: Describes features of the ANSYS Parametric Design Language (APDL), including parameters, array parameters, macros, and ways to interface with the Mechanical APDL GUI. Explains how to automate common tasks or to build your model in terms of parameters.
Basic Analysis Guide: Describes general tasks that apply to any type of analysis, including applying loads to a model, obtaining a solution, and reviewing the results.
Command Reference: Describes all Mechanical APDL commands in alphabetical order. It is the definitive reference for correct command syntax, and includes product applicability and usage notes.
Connection User's Guide: Describes how to use the ANSYS Connection products to import parts and models into Mechanical APDL.
Coupled-Field Analysis Guide: Explains how to perform analyses that involve an interaction between two or more fields of engineering.
Contact Technology Guide: Describes how to perform contact analyses (pair-based contact and general contact) and presents other contact-related features such as multipoint constraints and multiphysics contact.
Cyclic Symmetry Analysis Guide: Explains how to model and analyze structures with a repetitive geometric pattern in 360 degrees around an axis of symmetry, such as domes, cooling towers, industrial chimneys, milling cutters, turbine blade disks, gears, fans, and pump impellers.
Element Reference: Describes all elements, in numerical order. It is the primary reference for correct element type input and output, providing comprehensive descriptions for every option of every element. Includes a pictorial catalog of the characteristics of each element and guidance for selecting the best elements for your analysis.
Feature Archive: The official repository for legacy feature, element, theory, and command documentation. While Ansys, Inc. testing, error correction, Class 3 error reporting, and technical support are maintained for the capabilities documented in the archive, new feature development or technical enhancement is unlikely to occur.
Fluids Analysis Guide: Describes how to perform fluid-flow analyses involving thin films.
Fracture Analysis Guide: Describes how to apply fracture criteria in a fracture mechanics analysis to simulate the behavior of cracks or flaws in a structure.
Harmonic Balance Method Analysis Guide: Describes how to use the harmonic balance method (HBM) to solve structural dynamics forced-response problems with local nonlinearities, such as under-platform dampers of a jet-engine bladed disk, or bolted joints in a flange assembly.
Low-Frequency Electromagnetic Analysis Guide: Describes techniques for performing the following types of analyses: transient, static, or harmonic magnetic; steady state current conduction; quasistatic harmonic and time-transient electric; electrostatic; circuit.
Material Reference: Provides information about material model behavior and application, including details about the load-response relationship and the necessary information required to use the material models in an analysis.
Modeling and Meshing Guide: Describes how to build a finite element model and mesh it.
Multibody Analysis Guide: Describes how to perform a multibody simulation to analyze the dynamic behavior of a system of interconnected bodies made up of flexible and/or rigid components.
Multistage Cyclic Symmetry Analysis Guide: Describes how to combine multiple independent cyclically symmetric structures with different sector counts for analysis. Multistage cyclic symmetry analysis enables accurate and efficient simulation of rotationally periodic structures, including gears, turbines, and turbomachinery assemblies containing several cyclic parts.
Nonlinear Adaptivity Analysis Guide: Describes how Mechanical APDL can modify the solution process automatically (for example, via time-stepping and adaptive meshing) to account for changing conditions during a nonlinear analysis.
Operations Guide: Describes basic operations such as starting, stopping, interactive or batch operation, and accessing help.
Parallel Processing Guide: Presents parallel processing techniques that decrease simulation time, including shared-memory and distributed-memory parallelism, as well as GPU acceleration.
Performance Guide: Describes factors affecting the performance of Mechanical APDL on current hardware systems and provides information on how to optimize performance for different analysis types and equation solvers.
Rotordynamic Analysis Guide: Describes how to perform an analysis of vibrational behavior in axially symmetric rotating structures, such as gas turbine engines, motors, and disk drives.
Structural Analysis Guide: Describes how to perform structural analyses, including static, modal, harmonic, transient, spectrum, buckling, nonlinear, material curve fitting, gasket joint simulation, fracture, composite, fatigue, beam, and shell.
Substructuring Analysis Guide: Describes the procedure for condensing a group of finite elements into a single superelement represented as a matrix.
Technology Showcase: Example Problems: Showcases the features and effectiveness of Mechanical APDL by presenting a series of analysis problems from a variety of engineering disciplines. The problems presented are more substantive and complex than examples found in the standard documentation set.
Mechanical APDL Theory Reference: Provides the theoretical basis for many calculations that occur in the Mechanical APDL program, such as elements, solvers and results formulations, material models, and analysis methods. By understanding the underlying theory, you can make better use of the program’s capabilities while being aware of assumptions and limitations.
Thermal Analysis Guide: Describes how to perform steady-state or transient thermal analyses.
Tire Analysis Guide: Describes how to perform a comprehensive tire-performance simulation including various rolling conditions, material behaviors, and efficient parametric analysis and optimization.
Mechanical APDL Release Notes: Provides access to the release notes.
Other documents (such as seminars, the Programmer's Reference, and various supplements) may be referenced by or listed in the Mechanical APDL documentation set; however, those documents are offered solely for your convenience and do not undergo the same rigorous verification as the product documentation set. No documents other than those listed above are considered to be part of the formal program specification as stated in your license agreement.
All of the above documents are available online via the Help System, which can be accessed either as a standalone system or from within the program.
NOTICE — The documents listed above provide the complete specification of the ANSYS product referenced in your license agreement. This specification describes how to use the program, input required for commands and elements, and how the input data relate to the output.