### 2.1.15. Lay-up Plots

There are five different lay-up plots available in ACP:

- Thickness Plot

- Ply Angle Plot

- Look-up Table Plot

- Draping Mesh Plot

- User-Defined Plot

The Thickness Plot shows the thickness distribution for an entire lay-up or single plies. The Angle Plot is purely a ply-wise plot and shows the orientation angle of a selected ply. The Look-up Table Plot enables you to explore the interpolation result of scalar columns. Scalar columns can be used to define thickness, angle, or degredation fields.

The User-Defined Plot allows you a specify arbitrary scalar quantities for plotting.

All plots can display the information for all or a selection of elements through the data scope. A thickness and angle plot for all element sets is predefined by default. The plot definition for layup plots follows the same definition as for solution plots.

Figure : Thickness Plot

The context menu of the Lay-up Plots tree group has the following options:

- Create Thickness: Create a thickness plot.

- Create Design Angle: Create an angle plot.

- Create Scalar Look-up Table: Create a scalar look-up table plot.

- Paste: Paste a layup plot from the clipboard.

The context menu of an individual Layup Plot has these options:

- Properties: Display the Plot Properties dialog.

- Update: Update the selected plot.

- Copy: Copy the selected plot definition to the clipboard.

- Paste: Paste a lay-up plot from the clipboard.

- Delete: Delete the selected plot.

- Hide: Hide the selected plot.

- Show: Show the selected plot.

Basic plot settings are configured in the General tab of the Plot Properties window:

Figure : Angle Plot Properties (General)

- Name: Name of the plot.

- Data Scope: Determines what scope is used in the plot. Element sets, OSS, Modeling Plies & Sampling Points can be selected in the data scope. The data scope of a sampling point covers all plies that are intersected by the sampling point.

- Show on Section Cuts: Shows the ply angle on section cuts in the same color scale (Angle and Thickness Plot only).

- Ply-wise: Activates a ply-wise plot display. Thickness and angle plot are only shown if a ply is selected. Angle plots are automatically set to ply-wise. The plies can be selected from the modeling groups, sampling points or solid model analysis plies.

- Show on Solids: Shows plot data on solid elements and for solid elements only.

- Component: Allows you to select different component angles to be plotted as Contour (Angle Plot only).

  - Design Angle: The angle between the Reference Direction and the Fiber Direction. This is the angle between the element lay-up reference defined through the Oriented Selection Set and the user-set Ply Angle.

  - Draped Shear Angle: The local ply shear value due to draping.

  - Draped Fiber Angle: The angle between the Reference Direction and the Draped Fiber Direction. This is the angle between the lay-up reference defined through the Oriented Selection Set and the effective fiber direction due to draping.

  - Draped Transverse Angle: The angle between the Reference Direction and the Draped Transverse Direction. This is the angle between the lay-up reference defined through the Oriented Selection Set and the effective transverse fiber direction due to draping.

- Look-up Table Column: Select the Look-up Table column data that is to be plotted (Look-up Table Plot only).

- Ply Offsets: Visualize the results of a ply-wise plot on the selected plies at their true or scaled offset from the reference surface (Angle Plot only).

- Supporting Points: Visualize the location of the supporting points of the plotted look-up table data. The supporting points can be scaled in size and their labels indicate the row index in the respective look-up table. (Look-up table Plot only)

Figure : Look-up Table Plot of a 1-D Scalar Quantity with Supporting Points Shown as Circles

The Legend tab allows you to control titles, labels, and legend ranges:

Figure : Thickness Plot Properties (Legend)

Activate the Fixed Color Bar Range option to prevent the color bar from changing when switching from one ply to another.

The Draping Mesh Plot allows you to control if the Draping Mesh or the Flatwrap of a draping simulation are shown in the active scene.

Figure : Draping Mesh Plot Properties

Figure : Draping Mesh shows the Draping Mesh Plot. The worst distortion is located in red areas of the draping mesh.

Figure : Draping Mesh

The Draping Plot shows the average shear (distortion) angle of each element. The angles are given in degrees and they are the average absolute values of the corner angles differing from 90 degrees. Therefore no distortion is equal to zero degrees. More information on draping can be found in the section Composite Modeling Techniques under Draping.

Figure : Draping Plot for a Hemisphere

Figure : Flatwrap Surface of the Ply shows the Flatwrap surface which can be plotted using the Draping Mesh Plot.

Figure : Flatwrap Surface of the Ply

Release 18.2 - © ANSYS, Inc. All rights reserved.