Designing optimal reinforcement for high-performance composite tubes with semidefinite programming

Abstract: Fueled by their excellent stiffness-to-weight ratio and the availability of mature manufacturing technologies, filament wound carbon fiber reinforced polymers represent ideal materials for thin-walled laminate structures. However, their strong anisotropy reduces structural resistance to wall instabilities under shear and buckling. Increasing laminate thickness degrades weight and structural efficiencies and the application of a dense internal core is often uneconomical and labor-intensive. In this contribution, we introduce a convex linear semidefinite programming formulation for truss topology optimization to design an efficient non-uniform lattice-like internal structure. The internal structure not only reduces the effect of wall instabilities, mirrored in the increase of the fundamental free-vibration eigenfrequency, but also keeps weight low, secures manufacturability using conventional three-dimensional printers, and withstands the loads induced during the production process. We showcase a fully automatic procedure in detail for the design, prototype manufacturing, and verification of a simply-supported composite machine tool component, including validation with roving hammer tests. The results confirm that the 3D-printed optimized internal structure almost doubles the fundamental free-vibration eigenfrequency, allowing to increase the working frequency of the machine tool, even though the ratio between elastic properties of the carbon composite and the ABS polymer used for 3D printing exceeds two orders of magnitude.

MathematicsPhysics

Audience: researchers in the topic

Nečas Seminar on Continuum Mechanics

Series comments: This seminar was founded on December 14, 1966.

Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, Sokolovská 83, Prague 8. If not written otherwise, we will meet on Mondays at 15:40 in lecture hall K3 (2nd floor).