NUMERICAL TOOLS FOR ADVANCED COMPOSITE MATERIALS: A MEANS TO REDUCE COSTS AND IMPROVE PERFORMANCE

摘要

Numerical simulation is today used extensively by car companies in all areas of design of conventional metai structures. Applications include manufacturing processes, such as stamping, and also stiffness, fatigue and crash analysis of the vehicle. The methods have proven indispensable for cost efficient manufacture and vehicle design and have played a major role in the reduction of design time that has been achieved during the past decade. This paper discusses the state-of-the-art of numerical simulation for automotive composite parts. Examples in various fields such as stress analysis, thermoforming, Liquid Composite Moulding (LCM) and crashworthiness are discussed and example solutions presented. It is shown that real benefits are possible today using numerical simulation, but that major challenges still remain.