Variation Analysis of Design Parameters of Fibre-Reinforced Plastic Parts

Abstract

AbstractLightweight Design as an engineering domain is becoming more and more important in terms of sustainable mobility. Therefore, a large number of researchers is developing methods for utilisation of modern, but as well more complex materials with high lightweight potential. One subgroup of these materials are fibre-reinforced plastics (FRP). A lot of work is done supporting the design engineer in exploiting the structural and mechanical behaviour as good as possible. Whereas variations of laminate parameters, resulting from production, are poorly studied. Their impact especially on defined measures under load is of high importance, e.g. having a look on clearances in automotive industry. Because of the high complexity of FRP-parts, resulting from many laminate parameters, tolerancing is not an intuitive process. This is reflected in the fact that there is no defined procedure for tolerancing of FRP- parts. To support the design engineer the authors perform sensitivity analysis for simple loadcases to identify layers with a high importance on a defined measure. The results then are generalised to provide general guidelines to the design engineer.