Design of Composite Materials by Using the Intelligent Finite-Element Method : Determination of Laminated Construction in Consideration of Strength and Weight

Abstract

A personal computer program using the intelligent Finite-Element Method (FEM.) has been developed in order to analyze the components and its stacking sequence of laminate by which some design objects are satisfied. In this paper, the strength and the weight of laminate have been selected as the design objects. Taking these design objects into consideration, as the examples, a laminated plate under the conditions of bending and combined loads of bending and tension have been analyzed, and optimum laminated materials and stacking sequence for each condition have been determined. Therefore, it is recognized that the proposed intelligent FEM. in this paper is very useful for structure design of composite materials.