Key Benefits

INTEGRATE DESIGN, ANALYSIS & MANUFACTURE

The composites development process requires tight integration between design, analysis and manufacturing disciplines from concept through to manufacture.
Laminate Tools provides a common means of communication between designer, analyst and manufacturer. The laminate is defined in a manner that is acceptable to all parties. Ply properties, including fibre orientations and patterns, are stored in a single database. These data are readily exchanged with other composites tools during the development process.

 

IDENTIFY PROBLEMS BEFORE MANUFACTURE

Material shears and fibre angles change markedly when plies are draped over curved surfaces. Excessive shearing leads to manufacturing difficulties, while fibres may not lie in the required directions. Laminate Tools incorporates a robust draping algorithm to simulate producibility within seconds. If permissible levels of shear are exceeded, the user can reduce this by modifying the ply or inserting a dart. Identifying and dealing with manufacturing problems at the design stage saves great costs in downstream changes. Realistic material quantities can also be estimated early in the design process.

VISUALISE AND AUDIT MODELS

Composite models are much more complicated than conventional ones. For example, a racing car monocoque is typically composed of several thousand plies. It is impossible to examine and track the use of these plies without specialised composites tools. Laminate Tools incorporates extensive facilities to visualise plies, lay-ups and analysis models. Individual ply details can be reviewed immediately, while the stacking of plies at a point can be shown clearly through model or cross-section plots.

CREATE AND INTERPRET ANALYSIS MODELS

Conventional composite analysis techniques use simplified zone approximations of the ply laminate. These models do not represent the detailed structure of the component, and are time-consuming to produce. Considerable skill is required to simplify models without affecting results. Laminate Tools calculates and stores fibre angle and shear data for every ply on every element of a finite element model. This is translated into a zone description required by the selected finite element code within seconds. This ensures that the analysis model closely resembles the design model. More importantly, any changes in the design model can be reanalysed quickly.

 

CALCULATE FAILURE INDICES

Failure modes of composite structures are complex due to the anisotropic nature of the ply materials and the microstructure of the laminate. Laminate Tools calculates failure indices using popular failure criteria including Maximum Stress, Tsai-Wu, Hill, Hoffman, Hankinson and Cowin methods. Users can also define custom failure criteria using dynamically linked libraries. The failure analysis uses stress or strain results and material allowables read from a FEA results file. Margins of Safety, Failure Indices, critical ply number and critical load component are calculated for each element and can be visualised using standard tools. A text summary is also written.

OPTIMISE MATERIALS, PLIES AND LAYUPS

Laminate Tools allows rapid modification of the design and analysis models during the development process. This allows the user to optimise a design comprehensively in the time previously required for a preliminary analysis.

GENERATE MANUFACTURING DATA Reflecting the complex structure of a composites model compared with a homogeneous component, a large amount of manufacturing data is required to construct a composite component. Laminate Tools generates a sequential ply list and the 3D draped pattern and 2D flat pattern for each ply. This eliminates trial-and-error draping methods and variability resulting from laminator discretion. Mould surface data that accounts for fabric thickening on shearing is also produced. This avoids resin starvation during mould filling in RTM (Resin Transfer Moulding) processes. With Laminate Tools, real quality control can be designed into the manufacturing process. What was designed and analysed is actually made, allowing a full audit trail for laminated composites.