Learning Forum

[aahmadi]

I want to add two coatings to a surface. It doesn't say which coating will be on the top. Is it the case that the second coating will be the top surface in Ansys mechanical?

[SSURA]

Surface coating is usually the automated case where shell elements get scoped geometry of solid bodies with user defined properties. The shell elements use the same nodes as the solid body , like shared topology. The second surface coating does add to the number of elements and play a role in the analysis. The same can be checked in 'Material and Element Type Information' in the worksheet of solution information.
A manual method to replicate the same in simple cases is to create surfaces on the geometries with shared topology and meshing the surfaces with shell elements. Now since there are two noticeable two surfaces, you may add the desired material to simulate the same.
You may refer to the following links-
Surface Coating (ansys.com)
Surface Bodies (ansys.com)
Hope that helps.
Thanks Sahil

[aahmadi]

Thanks @ssura for your response. As I have two coatings, the surface coating option in Ansys mechanical doesn't works for me. I tried to create a shell from my 3D body in Spaceclaim and then assign 2layers to it in Workbench but the results don't look to be correct as when I compare just one layer, it is not matched with the surface coating method. Do you know any way to create a shell from a complex body in Spaceclaim? I just copied the body and removed one end to create a shell and then put a bonded contact between the body and the shell in workbench. Please let me know if you have any other recommendation.