Learning Forum

[Christopher Willett]

I am trying to model a composite plate with SOLID186 layered structural elements in ANSYS Workbench - Mechanical. I wish to partition the geometry into multiple solid volumes (completed via "slice" in design modeller); however, when I partition the geometry into multiple solid bodies I am encountering an issue with element orientation when issuing commands for a layered section for each solid body via APDL commands.

I add the following commands to each solid body of the plate geometry:

ET,MATID,SOLID186

KEYOPT,MATID,3,1

KEYOPT,MATID,8,1

SECTYPE,MATID,SHELL

SECDATA,0.3E-3,MATID,0

SECDATA,0.3E-3,MATID,90

SECNUM,MATID

These are the resulting element triads:

[Govindan Nagappan]

Can you use command objects to plot the results in layer coordinate system
I see that your plot says "LAMINATE CS", but you are defining the orientations using commands. The LAMINATE CS you create in Mechanical under "coordinate system" probably doesn't match the orientation for each element defined in command object