The research described herein concerns the integration of several comp
onents of engineering software using a relational database. More speci
fically, a conceptual finite element material preprocessing system for
laminated fiber-reinforced thick composite materials is studied. In t
his computer-aided analysis (CAA) system, a materials database is inte
grated with several software components, including commercially availa
ble finite element analysis (FEA) programs and preprocessors, and tool
s for the design of laminated composite materials. The system focuses
on assembling, manipulating and using composite materials data, result
ing in the transfer of 2-D and 3-D composite materials property data i
nto a finite element analysis program. The system is life-cycle in nat
ure, supporting a composite through testing, analysis and design. It o
ffers great versatility in its ability to use raw ply data from any so
urce, design layups, and generate laminate properties and FEA material
s data files. Despite the fact that such integrated systems are not ne
w in many domains, they have not been successfully introduced to the r
ealm of composite materials analysis and design. This outcome is due l
argely to the nature of the materials themselves and the overhead they
bring to the development of a successful life-cycle model.