Through-Thickness Location for Layered Materials and Shells
The Through-Thickness Location section is available in the Settings windows for Line Average, Surface Average, Line Integration, Surface Integration, Line Maximum, Surface Maximum, Line Minimum, and Surface Minimum nodes under Derived Values, when a Layered Material or Shell dataset is selected. It is also available for Line Graph, Point Graph, Point Evaluation, and Point Matrix Evaluation nodes when a Layered Material or Shell dataset is selected, but the Location input list is not available, and the local z-coordinate can only be a scalar for Point Evaluation and Point Matrix Evaluation nodes.
Through-Thickness Location
To determine the value of the evaluation, a through-thickness location is required.
From the Location input list, choose From dataset (the default) or Manual. For Manual, select a Location definition: Reference surface (the default), Physical, or Relative.
Once Reference surface is selected, the through-thickness location is taken from a layered material definition specified under Materials in a Layered Material Link or Layered Material Stack node, or in a Material node that represents a single-layer material.
Enter one or more values for a Local z-coordinate for the Physical option or Local z-coordinate [-1,1] for the Relative option. The bottom, middle, and top through-thickness location of a layered material, having a total thickness d, can be defined as follows:
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Bottom: 0 (Physical) or −1 (Relative)
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Middle: d/2 (Physical) or 0 (Relative)
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Top: d (Physical) or 1(Relative)
Click the Range button () to define a range of local z-coordinates using the Range dialog box.
Most of the variables defined on a layered material are available only on the surfaces and not directly available on lower dimensions (edges or points). In order to plot or evaluate such variables on lower dimensions, use the mean() operator once or twice depending on you are evaluating on edges or points, respectively. For instance, to evaluate the lshell.disp variable for the total displacement on edges, use the expression mean(lshell.disp). Similarly, to evaluate the same variable on points, use the expression mean(mean(lshell.disp)).