Among others, carbon fiber features excellent mechanical properties that when accounted in an optimal fashion for can provide a significant leverage. This is usually attained by performing stress analysis early in the design stage.
To obtain a close fit in respect to the required design the product models are developed by following closely the Classical Laminate Theory (CLT). For example, the orientation of individual carbon fiber layers as well as the optimal number of there layers are crucial parameters that control the service lifetime and functionality of a product. In this regard, significant advantages like shortened product development timeframes are obtained by employing stress analysis:
- first, stress analysis facilitates virtual testing of a plethora of design alternatives for carbon fiber orientation without necessarily building a physical model
- second, it allows for significant changes to be performed in terms of product geometry relatively fast and in accordance with the requirements. Both of these aspects notably shorten the development times of products made of composite materials
The mechanical properties of composites differ substantially from those of their constituents and are very often unavailable or little is known of them. In this case one usually proceeds to testing to get a detailed description and account of these properties. This is a highly iterative process performed in direct cooperation and building on the expertise of AC Analysis www.acanalysis.com