INTRODUCTION TO COMPOSITE MATERIALS IN A FINITE ELEMENT METHOD COURSE

The motivation of the work presented here is to include hands- on labs relevant to a finite element method (FEM) course. Hands-on laboratories are highly encouraged by ABET and results and surveys show that these types of labs help keeping students engage in this course. Theory of composite materials is presented to students including an introduction to types of composite materials; a review of stress-strain relationships of isotropic, orthotropic, and transverse isotropic materials; elastic constants, stiffness and compliance matrices, manufacturing processes and models to determine mechanical properties of laminated structures, such as the rule of mixtures (ROM) and the Chamis model. Finite element analyses (FEA) are carried out and compared to published results. The commercial finite element code Abaqus was used to set up a finite element frequency analysis of the composite plate setting the elastic mechanical properties in two different ways: using engineering constants or lamina. Results show that lamina results are marginally higher, but both approaches can model the composite material adequately.