About Material Excess

Without Staggering Plies

Below is some information on how material excess is created without staggering.

Material Excess extends plies that are coinciding with EEOP to the MEOP. All the edges of plies coinciding with edges of EEOP

are mapped with the corresponding edges of MEOP.

There is only one MEOP for all selected plies.

EEOP and MEOP with a Different Number of Contours

Below is an example where the EEOP contains an outer and an inner contour, whereas the MEOP contains only the outer contour.

Engineering definition of ply.1:
Manufacturing definition of ply.1:

The operating mode remains that of Defining the Material Excess. In the tree, the element (identified as Material excess.xxx) is displayed under each ply and contains only one contour.

This scenario corresponds to the process in which the cutouts (inner contours) are removed from the manufacturing definition of the plies. The manufacturing plies are nested, cut, and put on the mold without the cutouts.

In some cases, the MEOP can contain more contours than the EEOP, for example when tooling tabs are added to the manufacturing geometry of the plies.

Staggered Plies

Below is some information on creating a material excess with a staggering to create a ramp.

The staggering is specified by

The clearance. It is an offset from the MEOP, that defines the distance between the smallest ply and the MEOP.
The step. It is the distance between two plies to create the ramp.
The drop-off pattern. It ensures the plies arrangement in a specific manner.
The number of plies per drop. It is the number of plies on similar extended MEOP.
The minimum clearance from the surface edge. It is the distance between the largest ply and the support surface.

Each selected ply is extended to the corresponding extended MEOP.

One MEOP is created for each ply or set of plies. Each MEOP corresponds to one drop.

If you increase the number of plies per drop, some plies share the same drop, thus reducing the number of created MEOP.

The number of created MEOP = Number of plies on a surface/Plies per drop.

Cases of Cutouts or Holes

Plies, EEOP, and MEOP have adjacent cutouts. The plies and the EEOP share the same outer and inner boundary.
- In this example, the plies and the EEOP share the same outer and the same inner boundary.
- Result: Plies are staggered on the outer as well as on the inner boundary
Plies and EEOP have cutouts, but there is no corresponding MEOP cutout. Plies and the EEOP share the same outer and inner boundary.
- In this example, the plies and the EEOP have one outer and one inner boundary, MEOP has only an outer boundary.
- Result: Plies are staggered on the outer boundary and there is no cutout inside these plies.
Plies have cutouts, but EEOP and MEOP do not. Plies and EEOP share the same outer boundary, but the EEOP has no inner boundary.
- In this example, plies have one outer and one inner boundary. EEOP and MEOP have only one outer boundary.
- Result: The plies are staggered on the outer boundary and there is a cutout inside the plies. There is no staggering on the inner boundary.
Plies and EEOP have no cutout, but MEOP has a cutout. Plies and the EEOP share the same boundary.
- In this example, plies have one outer and one inner boundary. EEOP and MEOP have only an outer boundary.
- Result: The plies are staggered on the outer boundary and there is a cutout inside the plies. There is no staggering on the inner boundary.