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fe-safe/Composites™

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Composite Durability Analysis Software for Finite Element Models

Composites are an attractive material option for designers and manufacturers because of their high strength and stiffness to weight ratio as well as the ability to tune the material properties for specific applications. As their use becomes more widespread, there is an increasing need to understand their behaviour and design life. Until now, an accurate and robust fatigue life prediction tool for composites has not been available.

Predicting fatigue life in composites is challenging because even simple load states lead to complex behaviour in the individual composite constituents. Furthermore, the effects of frequency and load history can only be dealt with adequately by using physics-based theories.

fe-safe/Composites™ meets these challenges head-on by combining multicontinuum theory with kinetic theory to introduce a game-changing technology for fatigue life prediction in composite structures.

fe-safe/Composites™ is a robust and computationally efficient tool for predicting fatigue life in composite structures comprising unidirectional laminae predicts lamina-level fatigue life at every integration point in a Finite Element model predicts fatigue failure by applying kinetic theory to constituent-level stresses applies realistic physics to naturally account for the effects of frequency, mean stress, and combined loading requires only standard, static material properties and minimal fatigue characterization can handle arbitrarily complex load histories

Why use fe-safe/Composites™?

Composites are intrinsically different from metals and require a different approach to fatigue analysis

Key differences between metals and fiber-reinforced composites drive physically different load responses:

• Composites have multiple constituents with unique material properties contributing separately to the load response , so the composite stress and the constituent stress are not the same
• Composite behaviour is directionally dependant as it is influenced by the orientation of the fibers and surrounding laminae
• Most of the fatigue damage in composites is accumulated as microcracks in the matrix material

This results in characteristically different responses to fatigue loading.

Fatigue failure in composites is different from that in metals Metal fatigue failure is characterised by slow crack propagation; cracks initiate and propagate in a series of notch blunting and crack propagation events. By contrast, composite fatigue failure is a diffuse accumulation of damage, including multiple damage modes and complex failure mechanisms. This fundamental difference in material response requires a different approach to be used for the analysis of composite fatigue. Traditional metal analysis methods are not applicable to composites

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