Intact.Fiber: An Application Programming Interface for the Design, Simulation, and Optimization of Tow-Steered Composites

The unique advantage of tow-steered composites arises from the ability to tailor and vary the stiff fiber alignment continuously. However, the existing design tools for composite structures are limited to straight fiber systems and simple geometric configurations --leading to suboptimal designs and the inability to take advantage of improvements in composite manufacturing technologies. Development and deployment of new design tools are challenging due to challenges in interoperability, automation, and user interfaces.nbsp;In this STTR project, Intact Solutions in collaboration with the University of Delaware Center for Composite Materials will develop Intact.Fiber, a commercial-grade API that provides an interoperable and extendable interface supporting the parameterization, manufacturability constraints, physical simulation, and optimization of tow-steered composites. The salient features of Intact.Fiber include: (1) towpath query interfacing different design space parameterizations, (2) geometric queries interfacing manufacturability constraint checks, (3) moment queries interfacing finite element physical simulation packages (NASTRAN), (4) Interchangeable and interoperable tow-steer composites design through optimization, (5) fabrication of tow-steered laminate designs.nbsp;Intact.Fiber will allow the rapid and automated design of advanced composites tailored to reduce weight and improve structural properties, taking advantage of expanding manufacturing capabilities and delivering drastic reductions in development time and cost. Through the interoperable and ready-to-use manufacturability constraints and finite element simulation with NASTRAN for different towpath representations, Intact.Fiberrsquo;s architecture is designed to explore wide design spaces spanned by different towpath representations and optimization algorithms, delivering improved performance with optimal lightweight designs with highly tailored load paths.