Analysis of Laminate Structures

An article of manufacture including a non-transitory computer-readable medium, having stored thereon program instructions that, upon execution by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform operations comprising:

• obtaining a model of physical characteristics of a tangible composite laminate, wherein the tangible composite laminate comprises at least two plies, and the model comprises representations of each respective ply;
• identifying a virtual material model of one or more plies of the tangible composite laminate, wherein the virtual material model is associated with characteristics that match the representations of the one or more plies of the tangible composite laminate;
• updating the model by replacing the representations of the one or more plies of the tangible composite laminate with the virtual material model;
• and
• conducting structural analysis of the updated model.

A computing device comprising:

• at least one processor;
• memory;
• and
• program instructions, stored in the memory, that upon execution by the at least one processor cause the computing device to perform operations comprising:
• obtaining a model of physical characteristics of a tangible composite laminate, wherein the tangible composite laminate comprises at least two plies, and the model comprises representations of each respective ply;
• identifying a virtual material model of one or more plies of the tangible composite laminate, wherein the virtual material model is associated with characteristics that match the representations of the one or more plies of the tangible composite laminate;
• updating the model by replacing the representations of the one or more plies of the tangible composite laminate with the virtual material model;
• and
• conducting structural analysis of the updated model.