II.5.4 Setting and getting mechanical parts

Three methods are used to set the mechanical part of loading stored in the ClaLoad object:

• “setMembrane” sets the membrane part of the loading. The method has from 1 up to 4 arguments. The first argument is an Array of three Real values corresponding to the components of loading $l_{xx}$, $l_{yy}$ and $l_{xy}$ given in loading axes. The three following optional arguments are Strings giving the type of solicitation of the corresponding components. The possible values of these types of solicitations are "FM", "femFM", "SC", "femSC", and "NS". (See an explanation page 715.) If optional arguments are omitted, the default value "FM" is assumed.

  The “fem” versions of component loading types specify that when laminate load response shall be calculated, the corresponding component shall be retrieved from the finite element results stored in the ClaLoad object.

• “setFlexural” sets the flexural part of the loading. The method has the same argument types as method “setMembrane”.

• “setOutOfPlane” sets the out-of-plane shear part of the loading. The method has from 1 up to 3 arguments. The first argument is an Array of two Real values corresponding to the components of out-of-plane shear: $l_{xz}$ and $l_{yz}$. The two optional arguments are Strings corresponding to the type of solicitation of the components.

Each of the three “set” methods described above has a corresponding “get” method:

• “getMembrane” returns the membrane part of loading.

• “getFlexural” returns the flexural part of loading.

• “getOutOfPlane” returns the out-of-plane shear part of loading.

Each of these three “get” methods returns an Array containing the arguments of the respective “set” methods. The first element of this Array is an Array of 3 or 2 Real values. Then follow 3 or 2 Strings corresponding to the types of solicitation of each component.

Obviously, the different data inserted in, or retrieved from the ClaLoad object should be consistent with the set of units attributed to the same object. This set of units can be attributed to the object after initialization of the data.