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(continued...) The laminate engineering properties and the characteristic matrices are defined through the Compose Laminate module of the property input dialog and the orientation of each ply can be defined using the graphical Laminate Pre-processor.
The comprehensive suite of solvers available in Strand 7 includes static linear, non-linear and bucking, dynamic natural frequency, harmonic response and spectral response, linear and non-linear transient dynamic and steady state and transient heat transfer.
Although the majority of engineering structures can be considered to behave lineally and the assumptions made for linear solutions are valid, when the effects of geometry changes can no longer be neglected Strand 7 is also able to handle geometric non-linear behaviour.
A simple example is pressing a curved shell against a flat rigid surface in which case the contact area will expand as the external load increases.
Special contact elements are used to model such situations and the static or transient non-linear solvers are used to generate accurate results.
Strand 7 also offers extensive reporting and result visualisation tools including tabulated outputs and graphical plots.
Any quantity that has been calculated such as stresses, strains, forces and moments can be displayed on a coloured contour plot of the entire model or on cutting planes.
Stresses can also be plotted as vectors to indicate direction in addition to magnitude.
By selecting two points in the model an XY graph can be generated for any result parameters to be displayed in a separate window or superimposed onto the model.
Result data can be filtered by group or property or by selecting entities on the model using the Peek tool.