In engineering practices, various materials are often dealt with. So, it’s always essential for engineers to accurately and quickly define materials and material properties. For example, in common finite element analysis (FEA), defining materials is one of the first steps. And, material properties can be very complex, due to the variety of materials. Materials and material properties plays a major role in FEA, yet there was not an independent, easy-to-use material editing software to use. To offer a solution, WELSIM released a free material editing tool MatEditor that can be used independently. This tool can help users efficiently generate material data for engineering analysis.

The main user interface of MatEditor

Material Properties

Currently, the material editor supports 62 material properties, including:

Density
Isotropic Thermal Expansion
Isotropic Instantaneous Thermal Expansion
Orthotropic Thermal Expansion
Orthotropic Instantaneous Thermal Expansion
Constant Damping Coefficient
Isotropic Elasticity
Orthotropic Elasticity
Viscoelastic
Uniaxial Test Data
Biaxial Test Data
Shear Test Data
Volumetric Test Data
SimpleShear Test Data
Uniaxial Tension Test Data
Uniaxial Compression Test Data
Arruda-Boyce
Blatz-Ko
Gent
Mooney-Rivlin 2
Mooney-Rivlin 3
Mooney-Rivlin 5
Mooney-Rivlin 9
Neo-Hookean
Ogden 1stOrder
Ogden 2ndOrder
Ogden 3rdOrder
Polynomial 1st Order
Polynomial 2nd Order
Polynomial 3rd Order
Yeoh 1st Order
Yeoh 2nd Order
Yeoh 3rd Order
Bilinear Isotropic Hardening
Multilinear Isotropic Hardening
Bilinear Kinematic Hardening
Multilinear Kinematic Hardening
Anand Viscoplasticity
Strain Hardening
Time Hardening
Generalized Exponential
Generalized Graham
Generalized Blackburn
Modified Time Hardening
Modified Strain Hardening
Generalized Garofalo
Exponential Form
Norton
Combined Time Hardening
Rational Polynomial
Generalized Time Hardening
Strain Life Parameters
Compressive Ultimate Strength
Compressive Yield Strength
LaRc0304 Constants
Orthotropic Strain Limits
Orthotropic Stress Limits
Puck Constants
Tensile Ultimate Strength
Tensile Yield Strength
Tsai-Wu Constants
Prony Shear Relaxation
Prony Volumetric Relaxation
Shape Memory Effect
Drucker-Prager Strength Piecewise
Drucker-Prager Strength Linear
Ideal Gas EOS
Crushable Foam
Nonlinear Elastic Model Damage
Plakin Special Hardening
Tensile Pressure Failure
Crack Softening Failure
Enthalpy
Isotropic Thermal Conductivity
Orthotropic Thermal Conductivity
Specific Heat
B-H Curve
Isotropic Relative Permeability
Orthotropic Relative Permeability
Isotropic Resistivity
Orthotropic Resistivity

For ease of use, these 62 material properties are grouped into 9 categories: Basic, Linear Elastic, Hyperelastic Test Data, Hyperelastic, Plasticity, Creep, Visco-elastic, Thermal, and Electromagnetics.

List of material properties grouped by category

System Material Library

MatEditor also comes with a default material library, containing 33 different materials at the latest version, which users can directly select. These materials include:

Structural Steel
Stainless Steel
Aluminum Alloy
Concrete
Copper Alloy
Gray Cast Iron
Titanium Alloy
Aluminum Alloy NL
Concrete NL
Copper Alloy NL
Stainless Steel NL
Structural Steel NL
Titanium Alloy NL
Elastomer Mooney-Rivlin
Elastomer Neo-Hookean
Elastomer Ogden
Elastomer Yeoh
Neoprene Rubber
Brass
Bronze
Copper
Diamond
Ferrite
Nodular Cast Iron
Solder
Teflon
Tungsten
Wood
SS416
Supermendure
Water Liquid
Argon
Ash

These materials are grouped into six groups: General Materials, Nonlinear Materials, Hyperelastic Materials, Thermal Materials, Electromagnetic Materials, and Other Materials.

Material library grouped by category

Material Tree Window

MatEditor supports editing multiple materials at the same time. When a material is created, a new object is generated in the tree window. The material object with bold font represents the material currently being edited. The material object can be renamed by the user.

Tree window lists the created materials

Right-click on a material object to display a context menu, the available options include: edit, duplicate, delete, and rename.

Context menu of right-clicking on a material object

Material Property Window

The material properties window is the main window for editing materials. This window shows all the properties that have been added to the material. Users can add or modify property values, set units, suppress properties, or delete properties.

Set the property unit in the material properties window

You can delete properties by clicking on the option on the right mouse context menu.

Table and Graph Windows

For many materials, you need to use the table to enter material property data. Material properties based on temperature changes need values for each critical temperature. For the hyperelastic and nonlinear material properties, it’s important to add the stress-strain curve to verify the reasonableness of the input parameters. The graph window will display the corresponding curves based on the values entered in the table or properties window.

The table and graph windows show the Specific Heat property based on temperature changes

Graph window displays the theoretical strain-stress curve of Neo-Hookean hyperelastic material

Additionally, the table window supports other auxiliary functions. For instance, the user can change the unit of quantity data, add, or delete rows of data.

The table window sets the unit of the data column

The graph window supports various drag, pan, and zoom operations.

Right-click context menu on the graph window

Save and Export

The finished material data can be saved or exported by the user. These saved database files can be used in the future or merged to other softwares. Currently, the supported file formats are WELSIM’s own material format, and the generic MatML 3.1 format.

Material data saving interface

About

MatEditor’s information interface can display the software version and local hardware information.

MatEditor About dialog

To finish, MatEditor is a free lifetime material editing tool, where you are welcome to use and comment on. The software can be downloaded directly from https://welsim.com/mateditor.