Property-Based Optimal Design of Composite Materials and their Internal Architectures

Composite materials are increasingly finding use in diverse applications with a wide range of property and performance requirements. The ability to optimally tailor composite materials for these applications is of much practical importance, and forms the focus of this investigation. Composite materials tailoring refers to the concurrent manipulation of the materials composition and internal architecture of a composite material to achieve the desired properties. Since the wide variety of material combinations, reinforcement geometries and architectures to choose from poses a bewildering task of selection, a systematic approach to optimal tailoring of composite materials is a challenging design problem which is addressed in this article. This study presents a generalized optimal tailoring framework using the combinatorial optimization technique of simulated annealing in conjunction with a property model base consisting of analytical relationships between the composite properties and the microstructures. Optimal tailoring charts are developed, which provide for selecting optimal combinations of matrix and reinforcement materials, and reinforcement morphology, architecture, and volume fraction so as to meet the specified property and performance requirements. The study considers matrix materials that span the classes of polymers, metals and ceramics, while reinforcement geometries of unidirectional fibers, particulates and two-dimensional woven fabrics are considered.