A COMPUTATIONAL CODE FOR THE DESIGN OF THREE-DIMENSIONAL COMPOSITE STRUCTURES

Ramsaroop, A.; Kanny, K.

doi:10.21608/amme.2012.37266

A COMPUTATIONAL CODE FOR THE DESIGN OF THREE-DIMENSIONAL COMPOSITE STRUCTURES

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

A. Ramsaroop ¹
K. Kanny ²

¹ Doctoral Student, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa.

² Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, Tel: +2731 373 2230; Fax: +2731 373 2139.

10.21608/amme.2012.37266

Abstract

ABSTRACT
Conventional design techniques for fibre reinforced composite laminates prove to be
quite laborious. These methods involve numerous matrix calculations which make
manual computations very tedious. To overcome this, a designer uses a finite set of
fibre angles in a design; however the chosen angles may not be the optimum ones
for the structure. Therefore MATLAB codes were developed to assist in the design
process. These codes remove the guesswork experienced in the conventional
design methods and perform all the necessary computations quickly and efficiently
as well as being able to design three-dimensional structures. The developed codes
were verified via finite element analyses. The development and operation of these
codes are discussed further.

Keywords