FEM Shear of a Composite Block

Introduction
In this tutorial we analyze the shear deformation of a composite block consisting of a stiff core embedded in a soft matrix. It demonstrates the use of BooleanFragments and CompoundFilter to create solids for the block and the matrix from two concentric cubes. This work-flow ensures that separate MeshRegions, Materials and Boundary Conditions can be defined for the block and the surrounding matrix. The CalculiX results clearly show the effect of the stiff core on the response of the composite block.

Geometry
First we create two concentric cubes, one size 10mm and the other size 5mm. This is done in the workbench "Part". By default the cube is placed at the origin [0, 0, 0], so the smaller cube needs to be scaled down and shifted by changing the settings in the Data tab of the property panel. To make the core visible, the Transparency of the outer block is set to 50 in the View tab of the property panel. The result is shown in Figure 1.