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Optimisation of composite structures design

A Miravete, University of Zaragoza, Spain

Woodhead Publishing Series in Composites Science and Engineering No. 4

 - a completemanual for anyone concerned with designing composite structures
 - includes book and used-friendly software
 - can be easily applied to any area - aeronautics, automotive, marine or general industry

Composite materials have been used more and more during the last decade to lighten structures. But until now, there has been no clear way of establishing how to design properly optimised laminated composite plates with no reduction in strength. Most modern references lack adequate information for the designer wanting to tailor or synthesise a design. This exciting package offers a solution. It relates the theory of composite materials to real life and provides 'rules' for designing composites structures properly and in an optimum way.

In the book, Professor Miravete demonstrates the optimisation of beams, plates and sandwich constructions in the designs of advanced composite materials. He also illustrates optimal material systems, fibre orientations and lay-up through functions of geometry, load type and boundary conditions. The associates software, on two disks, will enable
users to adapt the information to their own requirements and is very user-friendly with helpful manuals. This will be an essential package for designers and engineers in a wide range of areas, from aeronautics to automotive and
marine as well as general industry.

Chapter 1 provides a general background on composite materials.

Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5 are concerned with constant thickness composite structures, and provide a survey of various design methodologies of shells, plates and sandwich constructions.

Chapters 6, 7, 8 and 9 examine variable thickness composite structures, and consider beams, plates and sandwiches.

ISBN 1 85573 208 4
ISBN-13: 978 1 85573 208 7
January 1996
256 pages  297 x 210mm  spiralbound  
£195.00 / US$330.00 / €235.00

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An e-book version of this title is available to purchase as part of a Collection or Pick n Mix or by Chapter. Visit Woodhead Publishing Online

About the author

Antonio Miravete is Director and professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Zaragoza, Spain. He is Chairman of the Spanish Association for Composite Materials and a member of the International Committee of Composite Materials. Professor Miravete is also author of 13 books and about 100 papers in international journals.

Titles which may also be of interest:
Design and manufacture of composite structures
Composites forming technologies
Wood-polymer composites

Contents

Introduction and preliminaries
 - Introduction
 - Anisotropic constitutive relations
 - Laminate theories
 - Numerical methods of stress analysis
 - Failure criteria
 - Numerical methods for design optimisation
 - References

Design optimisation of constant thickness composite structures
 - Introduction
 - Special configurations : SMC and fabric composites
 - Homogenisation of laminated plates
 - The free-edge effect
 - Conclusions
 - References

Shells
 - Introduction
 - Spherical dome
 - Spherical vessel
 - Pipeline and submersible hull
 - Conclusions
 - References

Constant thickness plates
 - Introduction
 - Design optimisation of composite plates in bending
 - Design optimisation of composite plates in buckling
 - Conclusions
 - References

Constant thickness sandwiches
 - Introduction
 - Core materials
 - Optimum design of sandwich constructions
 - Buckling
 - Conclusions
 - References

Design optimisation of variable thickness composite structures
 - Introduction
 - Variable thickness laminate stress distribution
 - Conclusions
 - References

Variable thickness beams
 - Introduction
 - Behaviour of variable thickness composite beams
 - Optimisation of variable thickness composite beams
 - Conclusions
 - References

Variable thickness plates
 - Introduction
 - Model assumptions and method of analysis
 - Determination of elastic constants and strengths
 - Optimisation of laminated composite plates
 - Conclusion
 - References

Variable thickness sandwiches
 - Introduction
 - One-dimensional laminated composite panels
 - Two-dimensional laminated composite panels
 - Conclusions
 - References

CD-ROM

Optimisation of composite structures design - OPTI-PLATES
Designs optimised laminated composite beams and plates using strength as the design criterion. It considers simply-supported, clamped and cantilever beams and simply-supported and clamped plates. Loads can be either point or uniform through-the-thickness loads. Failure can be chosen to be either by shear (thick beams) or by flexure (thin beam). Minimum hardware requirements : MAC, 2Mb RAM, Hypercard 2.0

Design advanced composites - DAC Plates/Sandwiches
Calculates deflection, first ply and last ply failure strength of synthetic laminated rectangular plate and sandwich structures, taking account of interlaminar shear effects. Strain and stress through the laminate thickness are also graphically shown. Sensitivity analysis can be performed, obtaining deflection and strength curves versus number of plies, orientation, load, geometry, etc. Minimum hardware requirements : 386 PC, maths coprocessor, 4Mb RAM, 5Mb free disk space, SVGA monitor, DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.1