ANSYS Workbench Engineering Data

By Phil Erisman SimuTech Group Chicago

The Engineering Data portion of the Workbench environment changed significantly with the release of ANSYS 12.0, and many users find the new look and behavior somewhat confusing. This short article endeavors to give the reader a basic understanding of how Engineering Data (ED) works in ANSYS 12.x. In ANSYS 12.x, ED is a native application built on the new Workbench 2.0 Framework. As such it is best approached without any preconceived notions about how it should work based on version 11.0. Instead, well focus on how it does work in the new framework. So, lets open ANSYS Workbench 12.x and begin

Interface
The Engineering Data interface is accessed by double-clicking (or right-clicking and choosing Edit) the Engineering Data cell as shown below.

This will replace the Project Schematic with 5 separate windows and change the contents of the Toolbox at the left side of the Workbench window. The graphic on the following page shows the various components that comprise the ED interface, each highlighted for convenience. We will discuss each of these components in turn, but first lets mention that to return to the Project Schematic, simply click the Return to Project icon from the toolbar up top.

Toolbox
The Toolbox now contains a number of expandable groups of material properties which have been filtered based on the analysis system. Only material properties and models which are applicable to the system which the ED cell came from are shown. I.e. for a thermal analysis, only thermal properties are shown. If you wish to view all material properties, irrespective of whether or not they are applicable to your analysis, click the little blue funnel icon at the far right of the icon toolbar. This will toggle the default filter off and show all material properties and models which may be defined in the ED interface.

Note: Even with the filter off, material models and properties other than those accessible through the ED interface may be available. These can often be defined through other means such as Command objects.

The Five Windows

Now lets move over to the 5 windows which comprise the majority of the ED interface.

Outline Filter
The topmost window immediately to the right of the Toolbox is called the Outline Filter, and it contains a list of material libraries. Note that the first row of the spreadsheet-like contents in this window (actually row 2 since we are ignoring the header row 1) shows Engineering Data for its Data Source and something like A2 or B2 for its Location. This Data Source represents the materials you have defined for the ED cell of a given system on the Project Schematic. Youll also see other Data Sources such as General Materials and General Non-linear Materials which represent XML library files using the MatML format to store data for a number of sample material definitions.

Outline
Moving down from the Outline Filter, the next window is the Outline. As you may have guessed, the Outline Filter serves as a filter for the contents of the Outline window. The contents of the Outline window show all material definitions which are contained in whatever Data Source is highlighted in the Outline Filter window. If you highlight General Materials in the Outline Filter window, the Outline window now shows material definitions with names such as Aluminum Alloy and Structural Steel. If you wish to use one of these sample material definitions in your system, simply click the plus icon in the column immediately to the right of a material name. This will add the material to your Engineering Data source as witnessed by the book icon in the next column to the right. You can verify this by highlighting the Engineering Data source in the Outline Filter window and seeing the new material listed in the Outline window.
Note: By right-clicking on a material in the Outline window, a context menu pops up that will allow you to specify the highlighted material as the default one to be assigned to new geometry.

Properties
Continuing this theme of what is selected in one window determines the contents of the next window, the Properties window directly below the Outline window shows the individual properties of the material model highlighted in the Outline window. Material properties may be added from the Toolbox (double click, right-click, or drag-drop) into the Properties window. Properties may be removed by highlighting them in this window, right-clicking, and choosing Delete. Note the Unit column to the right of the Value column. Units for the values entered for a given property are controlled by the two options Display Values as Defined and Display Values in Project Units in the Units drop down menu at top of the WB window. The as Defined option allows you to choose a unit from the drop-down box provided for each property. The Project Units option locks all property units to the system specified via the Units menu.

Table
In the upper-right region of the ED interface you will find the Table window. This window shows tabular data for the material property highlighted in the Properties window. For example temperature vs. material property dependency data will be displayed here, or perhaps cycles vs. alternating stress 3

fatigue data. To add tabular data simply start typing values into the empty boxes in the bottom row of the spreadsheet structure in this window.

Chart
The last of the five windows is the Chart, located in the lower right region of the interface. This window simply displays a graphical chart of the data shown in tabular spreadsheet format in the Table window.

Defining a New Material

A new material may be defined in two ways. First highlight your Engineering Data source in the Outline Filter window. Now you may highlight an existing material in the Outline window, right-click and choose Duplicate, then rename and modify the material definition as necessary. Or start typing in the bottom-most cell of the Outline window where it says Click here to add a new material. This will start a new material definition to which you must then add properties as described earlier.

Assigning Materials in Mechanical

Once your materials are defined in Engineering Data, you need to get all new/modified information into the downstream analysis system.

Return and Refresh

First, click the Return to Project icon to get back to the Project Schematic. Now you need to get the information regarding materials that were just defined or modified into the downstream Model cell of the system you will be working with. To do this either right-click the Model cell and choose Refresh or double-click the Model cell to open the Mechanical editor and choose Yes when prompted Would you like to read the upstream data. Alternatively, if you never closed the Mechanical editor when defining material properties, you may right-click the Model branch of your Outline tree and choose Refresh Materials.

Material Assignment
With the new material data information passed into the Mechanical editor, you now select a geometry object from your Outline tree and click to the right of the Assignment field of this objects Details section. This will give you a little arrow button, which when clicked, produces a context menu listing available material models to choose from.
Note: at 12.x you must enter Engineering Data from the Project Schematic! There is no option to start a new material definition from a geometry objects material assignment context menu like you could in 11.0.

Conclusion
While this short article is not a comprehensive look at every last capability and feature of the Engineering Data application, hopefully it has demystified the new 12.x behavior enough that the reader can start using it comfortably. 4