Modelling and analyzing parts with composites ?

[wingman]

Is there a way to model and analyse parts made of a composite material such as carbon fiber, wherein the material properties are different depending on the orientation of the material ?

Ideas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArKuHrMRtJk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKuQ9fIh_PE
https://sfepy.org/doc-devel/mat_optim.html

[saso]

NFX Technical Webinar: Composite Material usage and Theory
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMlwMc9aFvA

NFX 2014 Webinar: Composite Analysis Definition and Usage in midas NFX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I8Pvp4tWHc

Composites Simulation Analyst with SIMULIA in the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform
https://youtu.be/IfL4HXEsC_o?t=2775

COMPOSITE MATERIALS HANDBOOK - VOLUME 1. POLYMER MATRIX COMPOSITES GUIDELINES FOR CHARACTERIZATION OF STRUCTURAL MATERIALS
https://www.library.ucdavis.edu/wp-cont ... K17-1F.pdf

COMPOSITE MATERIALS HANDBOOK - VOLUME 2. POLYMER MATRIX COMPOSITES MATERIALS PROPERTIES
https://www.library.ucdavis.edu/wp-cont ... K17-2F.pdf

COMPOSITE MATERIALS HANDBOOK - VOLUME 3. POLYMER MATRIX COMPOSITES MATERIALS USAGE, DESIGN, AND ANALYSIS
https://www.library.ucdavis.edu/wp-cont ... K17-3F.pdf

COMPOSITE MATERIALS HANDBOOK - VOLUME 4. METAL MATRIX COMPOSITES
https://www.library.ucdavis.edu/wp-cont ... K17-4A.pdf

COMPOSITE MATERIALS HANDBOOK - VOLUME 5. CERAMIC MATRIX COMPOSITES
https://www.library.ucdavis.edu/wp-cont ... BK17-5.pdf

[bernd]

ATM FreeCAD FEM materials are isotrph. Have a look at CalculiX ccx manual. If calculix supports it, FreeCAD FEM is capable of supporting it.

[wingman]

Calculix seems to be able to handle composites.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68bezsY-1m8
https://www.researchgate.net/post/CFRP_with_CalculiX
https://researchspace.csir.co.za/dspace ... sAllowed=y

Searching for the word composite in the manual also reveals it supports material orientation and layers.
http://www.dhondt.de/ccx_2.14.pdf

If it is good enough for NASA, it is good enough for me.
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20190029045
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi ... 029045.pdf

I am not a US citizen. Would someone like to contact the authors of this paper and request the code for FEAMAC be released to the public in general ? NASA has done this in the past, with tools like OpenVSP.

The addition of composite materials and modelling would be a tremendous addition to FreeCAD. I am fluent in Python, C and C++. I will work on the project if I am given some guidance.

[wingman]

ATM FreeCAD FEM materials are isotrph.

Therein lies the issue. Ideas ?

I posted this in the materials section:
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 11#p367711

[saso]

Few more videos showing the workflow of setting up such an analysis in a commercial tool...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ItdtWg9UFQ Problem Definition and Parts Description
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwEpeJRd9F8 Part 1 - Geometry Preparation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRDJg5ApnmI Part 2 - Materials and Meshing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M72kiPe4Ho Part 3 - Creating Material Stackups and Rosettes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uksnwgiBVEg Part 4 - Oriented Selection Sets and Modeling Groups
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mvHCx-qftk Part 5 - Composite PrepPost Setup
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp8qp0fYYHo Part 6 - Post Processing and Parameterization

[wingman]

If calculix supports it, FreeCAD FEM is capable of supporting it.

What is the appetite for adding composite materials to FreeCAD, so that it can be FEA'd ?

[vocx]

What is the appetite for adding composite materials to FreeCAD, so that it can be FEA'd ?

I would say, not a lot. Truth is there isn't a master plan to develop things in FreeCAD, everybody develops what they want or are interested in. Do you want to add composite materials to FreeCAD? Then do it, it will be welcome.

FreeCAD itself doesn't do the solving, it just writes a text file that is used as input for external FEM solvers, like Calculix, Z88, Elmer, OpenFOAM, etc. So, the support from FreeCAD may be quite basic. It's the solver the one that needs to support composite materials in some way.

[bernd]

I forgot to ask? Would you like to use volume mesh or shell mesh to analyse the composite structure?

To implement this https://www.researchgate.net/post/CFRP_with_CalculiX for shell meshes does not seam difficault IMHO. But first I wuld play with editing the calculix input file after FreeCAD has created the input file. It needs only rare changes. If it turns out to be working we could implement it in FreeCAD FEM.

[nic]

wow! that would be a great addition!

I'm dealing on daily basis (using NX NASTRAN) with honeycombs sandwich panels. We use planar meshes with laminate (multi-plies) idealization. In the NASTRAN terminology, it is a PCOMP card.

In case of needs, I'm volunteer to write and document some test-cases and correlations. Unfortunately, I never played with calculiX, but that would be a good opportunity to begin.