Composites
Composites are a material class which offers huge possibilities to an engineer. The main reason for this is the material orthotropy, which allows designs whose stiffness and strengths are tailored to specific needs. Along with these benefits certain drawbacks go along, which have to be understood by the engineer.
These are (among others):
- Orthotropic stiffness, strength: The stiffness and strength for loads with are not orientated in fiber directions are very low. Therefore it is important to align the fibers according to the loads.
- Inter fiber failure: Composites fail if fibers fail. However, other mechanism like inter fiber-failure occur. Inter-fiber-failure means the failure of the matrix-material within a laminate. This damage does not necessarily lead to failure at once, but it triggers load redistributions within the laminate and it reduces the stiffness.
- Fiber Kinking under compression: Especially under bending one has to take care that the compression-side of the laminate is safe because the strength under compression the material can bear is far lower than the one under tension.
- Load-introction: Lokal loads peaks lead to high stress peaks in the fibers. This can lead to fracture or delamination.
IBK can offer a wide spectrum of competences. Apart from consulting stress and strength-analysis with an arbitrary strength-criteria is possible. If necessary, IBK can include specific failure models into its own design process. Apart from pure stress analysis design and optimization can also be done by IBK.
