OPTIMIZATION OF ELASTIC PROPERTIES IN THE DESIGN OF TEXTILE COMPOSITES

The elastic behavior of textile composites depends on a number of fact ors, including fiber and matrix properties, fabric architecture, and r elative and total fiber volume fractions. The optimum design of a text ile composite is, therefore, a highly combinatorial problem, In this w ork, the problem of predicting the optimum fabric architecture and fib er volume fractions to achieve a set of target elastic properties is f ormulated as a constrained nonlinear optimization problem. The design procedure uses the Stiffness Averaging Technique for the prediction of composite elastic properties. Two standard routines for solving optim ization problems are employed to identify optimum design parameters. S everal case studies are presented to illustrate the applicability of t his novel design procedure.