An Efficient High-fidelity Design Tool for Advanced Tailorable Composites

Tailorable composites have been proposed to further lightweighting space structures with improved performance. However, no existing design tools are capable of exploiting the full potential of these advanced material systems. The theory underpinning existing design tools was originally developed for traditional composites with straight fibers while tailorable composites usually have curved fibers with varying orientations or more complex microstructures. To harness their full potential, it is imperative to develop theories and design methodologies for tailorable composites and integrate them into commercially available design tools.We propose to develop an efficient high-fidelity design tool for tailorable composites featuring the following three innovations:Mechanics of structure genome (MSG)nbsp;based composite models for calculating the location-dependent stiffness and strength of tailorable composites, which can rigorously predict effective stiffness and strength as well as layerwise stress/strain/displacement distributions.A versatile parameterization method that can expand the design space to achieve better design for tailorable composites along with general-purpose optimizers to produce highly tailorable designs with optimized load path.An integrated design framework with user-friendly GUI plug-ins in MSC.Patran/Nastran and Abaqus for the design of tailorable composite structuresnbsp;to leverage the versatile modeling capability in MSC.Nastran and Abaqus.This project will benefit NASA and related agencies/industries by exploiting the potential of tailorable composites for designing better lightweight structures. The resulting efficient high-fidelity design tool developed in this project will shorten the design and analysis period of structures made of tailorable composites. Such a tool will ultimately reduce the cost associated with using tailorable composites and accelerate affordable space exploration by NASA and the private sector.