Manufacturing-Oriented Bead Patterns for Long Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Structures

This paper was produced for the 2019 NAFEMS World Congress in Quebec Canada

Resource Abstract

Long fiber-reinforced polymer structures offer lightweight design potential. However, there is still a need for methods that consider the complex material behavior in the design process. This contribution discusses the integration of the local, anisotropic material properties of long fiber-reinforced polymer structures into the calculation of bead patterns and bead geometries. A workflow to calculate the resulting component stiffness is presented. To this end, mold filling simulations using Moldflow are coupled with a bead calculation process, which uses Abaqus for the structural calculations. This requires a mapping process to provide the results of the mold filling simulation for the bead calculation. As commercial tools do not allow independently modifying the bead parameters height, width, base radius, head radius and flange angle, an algorithm is used to calculate the bead geometry and to generate more degree of design freedom.



To investigate the influences of fiber orientation and anisotropic material properties, a thin-walled, one-sided clamped plate under a bending load is examined. After calculating the fiber orientations and material properties of a plane plate with Moldflow, the result is transferred to Abaqus for the structural simulation. The stress distributions are provided for the bead calculation algorithm. The resulting beaded plate is then recalculated using Moldflow in order to derive the present fiber orientations and material properties. After an additional mapping process, another structural simulation is conducted and the resulting component stiffness is determined.



This procedure is compared with the state-of-the-art procedure, which is to calculate the bead pattern using isotropic homogenized material properties. Finally, the manufacturing-oriented bead patterns show higher specific stiffnesses.