MIA member DTE: Improve composite FEA process AND get manufacturing output

MIA member Desktop Engineering (DTE) have prepared the following article.

How to improve your composite FEA process AND get manufacturing output as a side benefit

When working with laminated composites it is important to consider the effects that draping the pre-pregs has on the orientations and thickness that get used in finite element analysis. 

Laminate Modeller is a plug-in tool for MSC Patran that does this fundamental job, but offers so much more. 

One of the side benefits of the draping process is the automatic creation of flat patterns.  These give you the shape you need to cut out of a flat fabric in order to achieve the ply boundaries desired on your 3D product. 

To do this in CAD is often expensive – the plug-ins to do it, like Fibersim, can cost large 5 figure sums, completely out of the reach of SME companies.  Laminate Modeller doesn’t do 100% of the job these tools do, but it does offer 80% of the capability for 20% or less of the price.  

This video shows you how to use Laminate Modeller to build an accurate Finite Element Analysis (FEA) model in Patran, and also how to generate flat pattern DXF files, an HTML ply book and tooling surface geometry.

For more information visit the DTE website here.