The Automotive Composites Conference & Exhibition (ACCE) organized by SPE is focusing on the key role of composites in the development of electric vehicles and sustainability initiatives worldwide.
Our Co-Founder and Managing Director Dr. Martin Hohberg will participate and provide a presentation on how to use our newly hosted web application SimuTherm to make optimization of composite molding using simulation more efficient and accurate. For more details, find the abstract of the presentation below. Besides this, Simutence will also be represented at the booth of the Fraunhofer Innovation Platform (FIP) at Western University. Moreover, he’ll provide a joint presentation with Louis Kaptur from FIP on the next-generation service hole cover in tape laminate sandwich design.
Feel free to reach out if you’d like to schedule an on-site meeting!
Abstract
Fiber-reinforced polymer composites offer significant potential for lightweight design due to excellent weight-specific mechanical properties. Manufacturing of composites, however, is challenging due to their complex thermokinetic and rheological material behavior. With an eye towards the fourth industrial revolution, modeling and simulation offer the opportunity to validate and optimize manufacturing processes virtually. In many cases, however, simulation approaches lack efficiency or accuracy. In this study, a real-time web service for thermokinetic analyses of composite manufacturing is presented. This enables efficient virtual manufacturing optimization through simplified prediction of through-thickness thermokinetics. Moreover, the initial temperature conditions for full-field molding simulation can be predicted, which has proven to increase prediction accuracy. Application examples are provided for both thermoforming of thermoplastic tape laminates and compression molding of LFT-tape-sandwiches.