Object oriented storage of material data for coupled problems

The calculation of coupled field problems in order to obtain realistic numerical models becomes more and more important. Coupling strategies require a flexible data structure to access the required material data. An object oriented data structure offers several features proving to be useful to store these material characteristics. This includes different tensor representations of the characteristic and different mathematical descriptions as tables and formulae. Hence, an easy and robust environment for the CAD-programmer becomes available. The use of these data structures is demonstrated by two typical coupled magneto-thermal and electro-thermal computations.