Powering NASTRAN with SwiftComp for Multiscale Modeling of Composites

Abstract

MSC.Nastran has been powered to analyze composite structures using a novel multiscale constitutive modeling approach by integrating SwiftCompTM, which is developed based on mechanics of structure genome (MSG). The multiscale constitutive modeling can provide a lower cost alternative or complement for predicting effective constitutive information in the preliminary design phase. Three dimensional (3D) orthogonal woven composite plate and beam structures are analyzed using CQUAD4 and CBEAM shell and beam elements in MSC.Nastran, which take the constitutive information as input from the subscale computed by MSG plate and beam models. Besides, MSG has been extended to predict the thermoelastic constitutive information considering the pointwise thermal loads. A 3D woven plate with pointwise temperature distribution along the thickness is analyzed to show the accuracy and efficiency of the MSG-based thermoelastic analysis. A graphical user interface (GUI) has been developed for MSC.Nastran to incorporate the constitutive modeling and to enable the automation of the information passing between constitutive modeling and structural analysis.