File Formats: Materials Library

Description

Material data can be stored in, and retrieved from, a .MAT file using Properties: Import/Export Materials. This enables the storing/retrieval of one data set at a time. To create a new material library consisting of a large number of material data sets, the Utility: Make Library function can be used. To use this function to create a new material library, a source text file in the format described below is required.

The source text file must be encoded in UTF-8. Floating point data can be entered in either fixed format (e.g., 23.454) or exponential format (e.g., 2.3454E1). The exponent character can be either 'e' or 'E'. The decimal separator can be either a period (.) or a comma (,). Either character can be used as the decimal separator without having to specify it, as long as the file contains one or the other, not both. Both period and comma are allowed in the material name field. Comment lines are allowed and are prefixed by a "/". Data fields are separated by space or tab characters.

There are 10 material data fields, arranged in the following order:

  1. Material name: must be between one and 250 characters long; must be enclosed in double quotes (e.g., "7049 T7351 Plate AMS 4200 4").
  2. Elastic modulus.
  3. Shear modulus.
  4. Poisson's ratio.
  5. Mass density.
  6. Thermal expansion coefficient.
  7. Thermal conductivity.
  8. Specific heat.
  9. Viscous damping coefficient.
  10. Use shear modulus. If this field contains the text "Shear", the material uses Shear Modulus under the Materials tab of the beam property dialog instead of Poisson's Ratio (ν). The field is not relevant for materials imported into plate or brick properties.

An example of a material library source file with three material entires is shown below.

Sample

/My custom materials

/Units: SI

"9998 T7351 Plate AMS" 2.000E11 8.03E10 0.25 7840 0.00002 23.32 430.2 0

"9999 T7351 Plate AMS" 2.021E11 8.00E10 0.31 7920 0.00003 23.48 432.0 0

"Timber - MGP10 - AS 1720-1" 1.000E10 6.70E8 0 500 0.0000035 0 0 0 "Shear"

"Concrete - f'c = 65 MPa" 3.740E10 1.55833E10 0.2 2400 1E-5 1.37 880 0

See Also