Material Assignment

Assigns a material to multiple bodies and control its behavior, like nonlinear effects, thermal strain calculation, reference temperature, etc. It also allows for a convenient way for users to edit material properties through a Commands object.

Important:

If you scope a Material Assignment object to elements, the application does not validate that the assigned material includes all required material properties to assure a successful solution.
Material Assignment element scoping does not support rigid bodies (Stiffness Behavior set to Rigid).
The Material Assignment feature is not supported by LS-DYNA.

Additional Related Information

Object Properties

The Details Pane properties for this object include the following.

Category

Properties/Options/Descriptions

Scope

Scoping, options include:

Geometry Selection: Default setting, indicating that you apply the feature to one or more bodies, which are chosen using graphical selection tools.
- Geometry: Visible when the Scoping property is set to Geometry Selection. Geometry scoping supports Body and Element selections only. Displays the type of geometry/mesh and the number of geometric/mesh entities (for example: 3 Bodies, 14 Elements) to which you have scoped the geometry.
Named Selection: Indicates that the geometry selection is defined by a Named Selection.
- Named Selection: Visible when the Scoping property is set to Named Selection. This field provides a drop-down list of the available body- or element-based Named Selections.

Definition

Material Name: You use the fly-out menu of this property to specify your desired material. This property can be designated as a parameter. Structural Steel is the application's default material. The availability and definition of the materials displayed in the menu is based on the materials that you have included in the analysis using the Engineering Data workspace or a CAD application. The menu includes the options New Material and Import. Both of these options open the Engineering Data workspace and enable you to create, edit, or import materials.

Nonlinear Effects: Options include Yes (default) and No. This property instructs the application to include the nonlinear effects from the material properties.

Thermal Strain Effects: Options include Yes (default) and No. This property instructs the application to send the coefficient of thermal expansion to the solver.

Reference Temperature: The reference temperature specified for the body is used as the reference temperature.

Field Coordinate System: When the selected material includes one or more properties that includes one or more of the coordinate field variables (Coordinate X, Coordinate Y, or Coordinate Z) the selection indicates the origin for the material field. The default (Default Coordinate System) makes use of a body's Coordinate System. Options include Default Coordinate System (default), Global Coordinate System, and if available, user-defined coordinate systems.

Suppressed

Common Material Properties

Provides a list of common material property values, such as Density and Young's Modulus. If a material property is based on tabular data, it is indicated by the value “table” with a parenthetical of the associated field variable. For example, a temperature dependent Thermal Conductivity value could have a value of “table(T) = 148.62 W/m · °C.” Field variable nomenclature is described in the supported properties section. The displayed value is computed using the default value at each of the material field variable. Also note that table data can include multiple variables (for example, T,C,U).

In addition, the following properties are included in this category:

Nonlinear Behavior: Read-only property that displays the value True or False based upon whether the material has nonlinear material models.

Full Details: Opens the Engineering Data Workspace so that you can view all of the data for the material.

Tree Dependencies

Valid Parent Tree Object: Materials.
Valid Child Tree Objects: Comment, Figure, and Image.

Insertion Methods

Select the Materials object and either the bodies in the Outline or the graphics window, right-click and select Create Material Assignment.
Select the Materials object and then select the Material Assignment option on Material Context tab.
Right-click the Materials object or in the Geometry window and select Insert > Material Assignment.

Right-click Options

In addition to common right-click options, relevant right-click options for this object include:

Insert >
- Material Assignment
- Commands
Suppress

API Reference

See the Material Assignment section of the ACT API Reference Guide for specific scripting information.

Additional Related Information

See the following sections for more information: