A Strategy to Support Design Processes for Fibre Reinforced Thermoset Composite Materials

Abstract

The concept stage in the design for a new composite part is a time when several fundamental decisions must be taken and a considerable amount of the budget is spent. Specialized commercial software packages can be used to support the decision making process in particular aspects of the project (e.g. material selection, numerical analysis, cost prediction,...). However, a complete and integrated virtual environment that covers all the steps in the process is not yet available for the composite design and manufacturing industry. This paper does not target the creation of such an overarching virtual tool, but instead presents a strategy that handles the information generated in each step of the design process, independently of the commercial packages used. Having identified a suitable design parameter shared in common with all design steps, the proposed strategy is able to evaluate the effects of design variations throughout all the design steps in parallel. A case study illustrating the strategy on an industrial part is presented.

Materials Selection of Thermoplastic Matrices of Natural Fibre Composites for Cyclist Helmet Using an Integration of DMAIC Approach in Six Sigma Method Together with Grey Relational Analysis Approach

“…Developing thermoplastic composite-based goods necessitates careful consideration of both the materials and the design process. For saving time and money on product design progress, it is required to connect the design processes with the whole design restrictions using comparable control parameters [7]. For more than two decades, experts have focused on the material selection importance in the design process [8].…”

Effect of layer shift on the out-of-plane permeability of 0°/90° noncrimp fabrics

“…Permeability represents the resistance to the flow, and becomes one of the most important parameters for numerical flow simulations that can assist the designer in optimizing the injection process in order to obtain a robust production process in the shortest possible cycle time. [4][5][6][7][8][9] Therefore, the characterization of preform permeability is a key issue to optimum process parameters and establish the optimum process window for manufacturing processes to fabricate high-quality products. 10 Layer shift is a geometric phenomenon and inevitably occurs during the process of ply stacking.…”