Material

The Material section describes the substance your part is made of. Every material has a set of properties — how heavy it is, how stiff, and so on. The built-in models ship with a sensible material already chosen.

Choosing a material

Pick a material from the list, then a material model — the mathematical description of how it behaves. The default isotropic model is a good starting point for most materials and needs no further settings.

Property values

Property	Why it matters
Density	How much mass is packed into a unit of volume.
Young’s Modulus	How stiff the material is — high values mean it barely stretches.
Poisson’s Ratio	How much a material thins sideways when you stretch it lengthwise.
Bulk Modulus	How resistant it is to being squeezed uniformly.
Shear Modulus	How resistant it is to being sliced or skewed.
Tension Separation	The maximum stretch a bond can take before breaking (fracture toughness).

You usually only need to enter the values you know. PeriHub can compute any value you leave blank from the others.

Advanced options

Setting	What it controls
Non linear	Use a nonlinear calculation. More realistic for large deformations, but slower.
Stabilization type	The numerical method used to keep the calculation stable.
Thickness	The material thickness used in the calculations.
Hourglass coefficient	A damping factor; usually leave at the default.

Tip: for a first simulation, keep the default material and its properties. Focus on getting the model to run before tuning the material.