Datapoint Newsletter: Spring 2024, Vol. 30.1
Successful accreditation audits; company growth; technical conferences
Read full postIntegrated Experimental Analysis, Modeling, and Validation of High-Performance UD CFRTP Lamina
Thermoplastic composites present a promising opportunity for innovation within the automotive sector, owing to their lightweight properties, durability, and recyclability. Our efforts concentrate on testing and developing models to accurately simulate the behavior of materials in automotive settings. By delivering precise simulation models, we empower manufacturers to gain deeper insights into the performance of these materials, thereby streamlining their incorporation into vehicle design and manufacturing workflows. This advancement ensures the effective utilization of thermoplastic composites, resulting in tangible advantages such as improved fuel efficiency, enhanced safety, and reduced environmental footprint across the automotive industry.
Read full postAdvanced Plasticity & Fracture for Structural Car Body Metals in Crashworthiness CAE analysis: SAMP-1 plus GISSMO
This paper describes an engineering process to generate material cards for forefront crashworthiness CAE analysis that properly capture both plastic and fracture behaviour of car body structural metals. The main objective of the paper is to show that advanced plasticity approaches can be used without significantly increasing the complexity of the overall material characterization process. The paper is mainly centred in metals plastic characterization for shell elements although some important relationships with the fracture characterization will be also discussed.
Read full postNon-Isochoric Plasticity Assessment for Accurate Crashworthiness CAE Analysis. Application to SAMP-1 and SAMP-Light.
A deep understanding of advanced material plasticity and fracture is one of the cornerstones of mechanical engineering to overcome present and future challenges in the automotive industry with respect to lightweight multi-material body solutions. The correct material law selection may imply a design lightweight efficiency improvement of between 10% and 20% depending on the material, component geometry, manufacturing technology and performance requirements. The accurate implementation of the plastic behaviour becomes mandatory when material fracture is a central design parameter. In this paper, the authors propose a clear process to experimentally measure and assess how far uniaxially tested materials are from pure isochoric plastic behaviour. This process will be named Non-isochoric Plasticity Assessment (NPA). In order to illustrate the process, NPA will be applied to actual experimental results of representative automotive metals and thermoplastics. Material plastic dilation behaviour is studied. A general description is provided regarding plasticity theory concepts required for the usage of non-isochoric plasticity material laws. An approach for the validation of the experimental input data consistency for both SAMP-1 and SAMP-Light material laws is also proposed. The overall approach is finally applied and validated on an extruded aluminium and a thermoplastic showing a proper level of correlation between CAE and experimental results for shell-based FE-models.
Read full postDatapoint Newsletter: Fall 2021, Vol. 27.3
Improving Crash Simulations; Growth in Testing Services after Move
Read full postDatapoint Newsletter: Summer '19, Vol. 25.3
New DatapointLabs Website; High Temperature Crash Properties
Read full postDatapoint Newsletter: Spring '19, Vol. 25.2
Full metals testing capability added to DatapointLabs test catalog
Read full postMaterials Data Workflow for Simulation of Composites in Transportation Applications
Multi-scale material models are being increasing applied for high level simulation of complex materials such as UD layups, fabric laminate composites, fiber-filled plastics. These models require data inputs from a variety of material tests which are then assembled into models used in the finite element solvers. We present an infrastructure for the digitalization of such information, where the required material data are collected including a process for maintaining traceability and consistency of the source data. Information about the compositional characteristics and processing history are captured. Built-in software modules or external client tools can be used for calibration of material models with the resulting material file linked to the source data. The accuracy of the reduced order model can be checked by running a validation simulation against a physical test. Models can be published and released into a master CAE materials library output where they can be used to model such materials for a variety of target solvers. This process improves the reliability and accuracy of composites simulation.
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