JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #92 - October/November 2014 - 46

design

because the design model has to be
completely rebuilt to incorporate the
changes. This can make the difference between world class products
and those that fail to satisfy customer
requirements.
To help eliminate these inefficiencies, Fibersim provides capabilities
to define composite structures with
enough fidelity that the specialized
details of a design are captured. It
integrates the zone-based definition
created in preliminary design and
allows the easy communication of updates without recreating the laminate
definitions or otherwise requiring
excessive rework of the data. Using
this approach the team can evolve and
efficiently optimize the design, helping to assure high quality and on-spec
performance. Figure 1 illustrates this
workflow.
As the design process continues,
there may be a time when the common zone-based definition no longer
supports the detailed definition
developed by the design engineer.
This can be a critical point where the

method of communication between
design and analysis becomes compromised and inefficient. Only Fibersim
provides unique multi-ply capability
to address this dilemma. Multi-ply is
a unique, industry-leading, time-saving capability that ensures communication between the design engineer
and analyst, eliminating the need for
reconfiguring the zone definition late
in the process.
Fibersim multi-ply capability allows
the zone definition to remain as the
foundation for the design, but enables
the design engineer to augment it in
a freeform way that doesn't compromise the common foundation of
communication that the zone definition provides. As illustrated in Figure
2, the design engineer would need
to create ply definitions, perhaps to
thicken a region near an interface that
do not correspond to the zone boundaries created in preliminary design.
Multi-ply allows the design engineer
to add plies where desired and pass
the design back to the analyst, incorporating both the zone- and ply-based
definition. This saves an enormous

amount of time and effort ensuring
uncompromised communication between the designer and analyst.
Fibersim communicates without loss
to and from a variety of structural and
thermal analysis software packages.
This open, vendor-neutral integration ties together the basics tools of
composite part design (CAD) and
analysis (CAE). It facilitates concurrent engineering from preliminary
sizing through verification of final
part definitions. Fibersim supports
all industry standard analysis tools,
including companion tools in the Siemens PLM Software suite: NX CAE,
NX Laminate Composites, and LMS
Samcef.

Conclusion
To achieve high performance in aerostructures development, companies
must embed specialized compositespecific capabilities into their development processes. This is necessary
to ensure that as designs progress
they are continuously verified and
design teams are aware of how closely
the design meets customer requirements.
Siemens PLM Software offers composite-specific design solutions that
encapsulate best practices and make
composite design more controlled
and easier to accomplish. A combination of unique design methodologies,
open data transfer mechanisms, and
world-class analysis capabilities helps
to ensure designs are created in a high
performance process to reach the
highest levels of quality and customer
satisfaction. n

Fig. 2: Multi-ply capability incorporates freeform ply definitions into a zone based part

46 jec composites magazine / No92 October - November 2014

More information:
www.siemens.com/plm/fibersim

http://www.siemens.com/plm/fibersim

JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #92 - October/November 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #92 - October/November 2014