Zone-based workflow

The following steps summarize the overall process you should follow for a zone-based workflow.

Step	Summary	detailed help topic
1.	Define your laminate.	Create new plies and stack them in order to achieve desired properties.	Creating a laminate physical propertyDefine ply propertiesDefining plies and a stacking sequence
2.	Create your laminate materials and ply materials.	Choose the materials best suited to your laminate. Materials can be isotropic or orthotropic. Ply Materials can be created from their matrix and fiber constituents.	Defining materials for laminate plies
3.	Validate your laminate.	Compute the laminate properties and ascertain its stiffness, density, stability and strength.	Validating laminate properties and strength
4.	Create your mesh.	Create meshes with appropriate shell or solid elements that refer to your laminates.	Element type support for laminates
5.	Define the material orientation.	Define an orientation for the entire mesh, mesh collector or for specific elements.	Material and ply orientation
6.	Inflate the global layup.	(Optional) You can inflate the laminate:Using the 2D shell mesh and ply thicknesses.Filling the void between two 2D dependent meshes in combination with the ply thicknesses.During inflation, Pre/Post does not create drop-off resin elements in the zone-based process. If the inflated meshes are based on physical properties that contain different numbers of plies, the meshes are discontinuous at their boundaries.	Inflating laminates
7.	Apply your loads and boundary conditions		Boundary conditions
8.	Solve your laminate model	Solve the Nastran, ANSYS, Abaqus, or Simcenter Samcef solution.	Solution and post processing
9.	Post-process the solver results	Review your results in Pre/Post post-processing.	Post-processingSolution and post processing
10.	Identify critical areas.	Review failure indices and margins of safety.	Advanced post processing of laminate resultsManaging post report solves

Learn more

Simcenter 3D Laminate Composites

Laminate definition methods

Managing laminates and layups

Ply-based workflow

Look up more details

Laminate glossary

Coordinate systems for laminates

Material and ply orientation

Element type support for laminates

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Zone-based workflow, Simcenter 3D 2021.1 Series

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