Perform optimized and robust composites designs to maintain strength rating while optimizing weight and thereby reducing cost of manufacturing and prototyping.

The Composites Structures Engineer for Marine and Offshore role provides engineers with advanced composites design tools and finite element simulation capabilities. The role offers robust design methods, dedicated to capturing both design intents from stress department as well as the context of assembly, while also considering the manufacturing process and its associated constraints. This conceptual to detailed design approach fully matches with the design practices of the composites industries, from the ‘ply by ply’ approach for simpler part, to the ‘grid’ approach for more complex stiffened structure.

Dedicated tools helps the composites design engineers to integrate with other disciplines (numerical sizing and manufacturing) and to produce the expected data while the design reaches its final maturity (conceptual solid, refined ply contours & properties, 3D Sections, weight estimation, etc.). The composites design data are automatically transfered to the finite element model regardless of the maturity of the design: the composites properties can be retrieved either from the conceptual data (zones, grid, virtual stacking) or from the plies with the ability to account for the as manufactured fiber orientations calculated by the producibility analysis.

The engineer can then conduct structural nonlinear static, frequency, buckling, modal dynamic response simulations of the composites design and assess the key performance indicators of the structure. Dedicated failure criteria (Tsai-Hill, Tsai-Wu…) and ply-based post-processing tools help the engineer to fully understand the specific behavior of the composites structures.

The Composites Structures Engineer for Marine and Offshore role is fully integrated with the Composites Manufacturing Engineer for Marine and Offshore role dedicated to the preparation of a composites design into a producible part.

Benefits

For the design of the composites parts:

• Advance Surface Modeling tools along with Industry-proven design approaches to create composites data on complex surfaces.

• Fully associative design to handle changes, modifications and updates quickly and automatically.

• Capabilities to design in context of Assemblies.

• Define and manage complete stacking and generate plies from the virtual stacking.

• Ability to generate conceptual solids or IML surfaces for early integration of the composites parts in the mock-up.

• Advanced Producibility Analysis with fiber simulation for Hand Layup and Fiber Placement

• Powerful and accurate plies modification (swap, reroute, drop-off, plies chamfer, plies corner,…)

• Account manufacturing constraints early in the design process with dedicated features (3D Multi-Splicing, Darts, No Splice Zone, Butt Splice Zone,…)

• An array of Review tools (Check and Validate Contours, Perform Numerical Analysis, Visualize ply section, Core samples,…)

• Integrate Quality rules based approach for robust design and control of composites data.

• Prepare drawing-based ply book with ease and manage updates and changes automatically.

• Support for composites data model simulation with the Composites Simulation Engineer role.

For the simulation of the composites structures:

• Provide engineers with the powerful and intuitive tools needed to perform sophisticated structural simulations using best-in-class simulation technology.

• Delivers access to sophisticated simulation technology within an intuitive interface providing high-quality, realistic results dedicated to composites (Tsai-Hill, Tsai-Wu...)

• Offers multistep structural scenarios for composites structures performance and quality testing during the product design process accounting for the actual fiber orientation (as-manufactured)

• Determine the strength of a composites structures designed by reporting stress and deformations distribution

• Improve designs at risk for resonance and other dynamic effects

• Combine nonlinear base state with dynamic response for improved vibration prediction

• Enables high performance results visualization, particularly for very large models

  • Interrogation of realistic simulation results with speed, clarity, and control on the desktop for enhanced decision making.

  • High performance visualization tools enable efficient post-processing of large-scale simulation data including an option to use remote machines for rendering and visualization computation.

Highlights

For the design of the composites parts:

• Robust surface modeling tools

• Industry-proven design approaches

  • Preliminary grid & zone design

• Ply modeling tools based on associative 3D features

• Best-in-class Solid and IML

  • ITA and Junction lines control

  • Core elevation

• Advanced producibility analysis

  • Real-Time fiber deposit deviation analysis (Dynamic Draping)

  • Fiber deposit strategies control

• Integrate Quality rules in the design process for robust design and control.

• Engineering deliverables and DMU integration

  • Associative Drawings with Generative view style and annotation templates

  • Review results export

For the simulation of the composites structures:

• Fully integrated with 3DEXPERIENCE Design/Engineering and Simulation product suite

• 3D CAD Data import in 3DEXPERIENCE Platform for 3D Design simulation

• Linear and nonlinear simulation setup (single or multi-step) for structural and thermal analysis

• Static, Frequency, Buckling, Thermal, Modal Dynamic and Implict Dynamic analysis types

• Realistic behavior Simulation under structural loading conditions

• Linear and advanced nonlinear material options, including engineering plasticity for metals and hyperelasticity for rubber (elastomers)

• Contact (surface pairs, detection, general contact and initialization) definition

• Deformable, intermittent contact between parts and assemblies

  • Parts within an assembly can move into and out of contact with each other according to the loading

• High quality meshing directly on the design geometry, including rule-based meshing

  • High quality solid and shell meshes can be created using meshing tools. Multiple mesh representations can be generated, managed, and used for various types of simulation. 

  • Meshes are strongly associated with the geometry and can be easily updated following geometric modifications without the need for recreation of attributes.

  • Mesh visualization and quality check tools are available.

• Automatic mesh generation, including mesh export

  • Automatic mesh generation with tetrahedral elements is provided, including specification of element type.

  • The generated mesh can be exported in Abaqus (.inp) or Nastran (.bdf) formats.

• Efficient post processing tools to interpret and understand product behavior

  • Report Generator

  • Contour/Vector/IsoSurface Displays

  • XY Plotting

  • Animation/Cut Plane.

• High-performance results post-processing

  • Efficient post-processing for the largest of simulation models using distributed HPC resources

• Leverages proven Abaqus technology

  • Accurate structural and thermal simulations in an intuitive workflow

• High performance on multi-core workstations

  • Modern simulation solution on multi-core distribute HPC clusters