Note the following when working with layer sections.
If multiple thickness objects (including Layered Section objects) are applied to the same face, only those properties related to the last defined object will be sent to the solver, regardless of whether the object was defined in DesignModeler or in Mechanical. See Specifying Faces With Multiple Thicknesses and Layers for details.
If adjacent elements within the same part have different thickness values, the elements will appear to be ramped.
If the ratio of Young's Modulus (Material Stiffnesses) between adjacent layers is very high, the accuracy of this calculation may be adversely affected.
Layered Sections cannot be scoped to rigid bodies.
Layered Sections do not affect the following items:
Assembly properties: volume, mass, centroid, and moments of inertia. This is for display in the Details view only. The correct properties based on any variable thickness are correctly calculated in the solver and can be verified through miscellaneous record results for Mechanical APDL based solutions.
Meshing: auto-detection based on surface body thickness, automatic pinch controls, surface body thickness used as mesh merging tolerance.
Solution: Heuristics used in beam properties for spot welds.
A Thermal Condition applied to a Layered Section is only valid if applied to both shell faces (Shell Face is set to , not to or ).
Layered Sections are not valid with cyclic symmetry.
The following material properties are supported by Layered Sections in an Explicit Dynamics analysis:
Isotropic Elasticity, Orthotropic Elasticity
Johnson Cook Strength, Zerilli Armstrong Strength, Steinberg Guinan Strength, Cowper Symonds Strength
Orthotropic Stress Limits, Orthotropic Strain Limits, Tsai-Wu Constants
Plastic Strain, Principal Stress, Stochastic Failure,
For orthotropic materials in Explicit Dynamics, the Z material direction is always defined in the shell normal direction. The X material direction in the plane of each element is determined by the x-axis of the coordinate system associated with the Layered Section. If the x-axis of this coordinate system does not lie in the element plane, then the x-axis is projected onto the shell in the coordinate system z-axis direction. If the z-axis is normal to the element plane, then the projection is done in the coordinate system y-axis. For cylindrical systems, it is the y-axis that is projected onto the element plane to find the Y material direction.