A DESIGN ENVIRONMENT FOR LAMINATED FIBER-REINFORCED THICK COMPOSITE-MATERIALS

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.