Exploring the Use of a Digital Thread for Efficient Design of Composite Structures

Abstract

Damage tolerance is very difficult to quantify for composite structures early in the design process, due to the lack of mature predictive computational tools. This uncertainty adds risk and can result in overly conservative designs. In this paper, a framework for optimizing a laminate for damage tolerance is proposed as a part of the conceptual design stage given in the context of the digital thread. The framework is demonstrated with uncertainty quantification on a simple laminate using a finite element model sampled using a polynomial chaos expansion technique