Early assessment of composite structures

To meet the need of lightweight chassis in the near future, a technological step of introducing anisotropic materials like Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastics (CFRP) in structural parts of cars is a possible way ahead. Though there are commercially available tools to find suitability of Fibre Reinforced Plastics (FRPs) and their orientations, they depend on numerical optimization and complexity increases with the size of the model. Nevertheless, the user has a very limited control of intermediate steps. To understand the type of material system that can be used in different regions for a lightweight chassis, especially during the initial concept phase, a more simplified, yet reliable tool is desirable. The thesis aims to provide a framework for determining fibre orientations according to the most-ideal loading path to achieve maximum advantage from FRP-materials. This has been achieved by developing algorithms to find best-fit material orientations analytically, which uses principal stresses and their orientations in a finite element originating from multiple load cases. This thesis takes inspiration from the Durst criteria (2008) which upon implementation provides information on how individual elements must be modelled in a component subjected to multiple load cases. This analysis pre-evaluates the potential of FRP-suitable parts. Few modifications have been made to the existing formulations by the authors which have been explained in relevant sections. The study has been extended to develop additional MATLAB subroutines which finds the type of laminate design (uni-directional, bi-axial or quasi-isotropic) that is suitable for individual elements. Several test cases have been run to check the validity of the developed algorithm. Finally, the algorithm has been implemented on a Body-In-White subjected to two load cases. The thesis gives an idea of how to divide the structure into sub-components along with the local fibre directions based on the fibre orientations and an appropriate laminate design based on classical laminate theory