A Grammatical Approach for Customization of Laminated Composite Materials

Abstract

The wide range of properties covered by the manufacturable fiber—matrix combinations of composite materials, along with their directional property characteristics, provides designers with material selection flexibility during designing composite material products. Meeting multiple property goals, however, complicates the design process as both the composite material selection and the component shape formation becomes intricate with the multiple loading conditions, which may require matrix calculations of high order to determine theoretical value of composite material properties. This article presents a grammatical approach that is derived by extending shape grammars to simultaneously consider the shape of a component and select appropriate composite materials to meet multiple property goals, derived from a set of design loads. In this approach the grammar is divided into four interconnected steps, which are used to design the shape of the component depending on its function and user requirements, calculate the property requirements from the loading constraints based on the designed shape, and select composite materials according to the property requirements. Selection of composite materials involves determining the fiber and matrix, their volume fraction, number of plies, and ply orientations in different location of the load-bearing component. A hollow shape hip replacement joint is designed using composite material to illustrate the approach. Finite element analysis is performed to verify the design.