Design of composite laminates by a Monte Carlo method

Thesis/Dissertation · Wed Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1992

OSTI ID:5841231

Fang, C

A Monte Carlo procedure was developed for optimizing fiber reinforced composite laminates such that the weight is minimum and the Tsai-Wu strength failure criterion is satisfied in each ply. The laminate may contain a core. Each ply of the laminate (if there is no core) or of the face sheets (if there is a core) may be made of a different material. The laminate may be subjected to a single set or to multiple sets of combined in plane and bending loads. The procedure yields the number of plies, the fiber orientation, and the material of each ply in the laminate and the material and thickness of the core. A user friendly computer code was written for performing the numerical calculations. Laminates optimized by the code were compared to laminates resulting from existing optimization methods. These comparisons showed that the present Monte Carlo procedure is a useful and efficient tool for the engineering design of composite laminates.

• Research Organization: Stanford Univ., CA (United States)
• OSTI ID: 5841231
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
360601* -- Other Materials-- Preparation & Manufacture
360603 -- Materials-- Properties
ALGORITHMS
CALCULATION METHODS
COMPUTER CODES
DESIGN
FIBERS
FRACTURE PROPERTIES
LAYERS
MATERIALS
MATHEMATICAL LOGIC
MECHANICAL PROPERTIES
MONTE CARLO METHOD
REINFORCED MATERIALS
WEIGHT