Using the module «composite materials» in the software package COMSOL multiphysics

Abstract

The Composite Materials Module utilizes specialized layered material technology and provides two approaches that can be used to accurately model composite shells: layerwise theory and equivalent single layer theory. The layerwise approach is suitable for thick to moderately thin composite shells with a limited number of layers. The equivalent single layer theory is suitable for thin to moderately thick shells and can accommodate many layers without significant performance impact. Using these theories, you can optimize the layup and other parameters of a laminate by performing multiscale, multiphysics, and various failure analyses.There are two fundamentally different types of interaction between the mechanics in the laminate and other processes. For physical processes that occur inside the laminate, you can solve for all of the physical phenomena simultaneously, including the couplings between them. In other physical processes, the laminate acts as a boundary for a 3D domain where something important occurs.The paper analyzes the use of composite materials in various industries. Widespread use of composite materials is associated with the ability to form the electrical and mechanical characteristics of such materials by selecting their qualitative and quantitative composition, particle shape of components, the geometry of the mutual arrangement (connectivity) of components. Depending on the connectivity of the components, there are three main effects of the interaction of their properties: the sum effect, the combination effect and the product effect, which allows not only to strengthen or weaken the properties of its components in the composite material, but also to obtain fundamentally new properties. . However, the calculation of such structures is a complex task that requires very high skills of the developer and a lot of time and computing resources. Therefore, this work is aimed at solving an important technical problem through the use of modern software COMSOL Multiphysics, and the creation of adapted to engineering use of a systematic approach to the development of composite components for various industries. The article considers the introduction of the use of the module "Composite Materials" for the calculation of complex engineering problems. An algorithm for calculating composite materials in the COMSOL Multiphysics software package and implementing this algorithm for calculating different types of tasks is proposed.