Blogs

MicMac-FEA for Abaqus 6.11 is available for download at the download utility.

Dear Steve, Daniel, and all the presenters,

Thank you all, Prof Tsai, Prof Ha, and your team, for all the micmac's and especially these two products. After the ipost was loaded, I tried to play around with these tools and wow, they're superb. They will really make our work in the conceptual phase a cake walk.

As a pay-back, I'll try to add a generic airfoil capability in the tool and post it here when its ready. If anyone is interested in contributing, please feel free to chime in here or email me directly.

I'd suggest the following:
The plan is to first allow a generic airfoil to be defined. Then extract 2D lift/drag figures from XFoil add a lifting line theory to generate spanwise lift distribution. This will be fairly accurate in load generation. From this a model that could be scaled can be easily added to HyBlade like a template.

As a manufacturing company located in Italy, we've been told by the environmental agency here that in a new operation, such as ours, they will not allow/license the manufacture of anything with open access to resin. Therefore, meeting the environmental requirements will far outweigh the costs involved in developing the same process using pultrusion dies with infusion of resin. Additionally, due to new VOC regulations any existing operation using such methods has a limited number of years to cease all high VOC type of activity in area's open to workers.

This points to the answer for ladder manufacture question and the nature of the information shared.

Is there a homework 7, 8, or 9? On Monday Sung Ha said he had not prepared a homework set for 3D beams (HW 7) and then on yesterday Jeffery Fong only very briefly said that

I still can't get MicMac FEA to run properly. Even after chaning the visual basic code to the right batch file, it still won't run Abaqus. Will the updated version of MicMac FEA be posted soon?

Is there any data available for E-Glass/Unsaturated Polyester (isophthalic) combination to use in MicMac? I have only found E-glass/Epoxy combinations to date. Thanks!

Hello, has there been any update on MicMacFEA (to work with V6.11) and MicMacBeam (for the Java post-processor)?

Thank you.

I downloaded the LAMRANK.zip file, saving it in a folder on my desktop. I extracted everything into a directory in that folder.

In building carbon bicycle frames we use the traditional tube to tube construction method.

As a new designer I just want to double check the following:

Is MicMac Lt appropriate for the analysis of round carbon bicycle tubing? Or should I use FEA?

Submission date for HW#4 was postponed to January 26 since we have not received the new version of MicMac-FEA.

Dear all,

A few years back, I'd done some work regarding faster means of curing of composites for our internal production processes, basically to think of alternative ways to create better aircraft parts without the costs and cycle time of autoclaves. There was something similar to what I was thinking that was being done elsewhere as well. So this is what we found out, catalytic conversion of methane gives energy in the 2-9micron range, which is better than a focused energy at a single frequency that electric/infrared/microwave-generator would give. This spread of energy is suited for curing of composites. This is a very basic youtube video on catalytic heaters.

However, there is a problem, that methane catalytic converters have a hard time in finely controlling the amount of heat. Due to lack of resources and the pre-programming (that we should have a certain curing cycle etc.) we had from our epoxy supplier, we dropped this idea early on, but perhaps it was too early. If one could have a part that moved in between a bank of such catalytic heaters, one could control the absorption of radiation. There are some other ideas that could control that heat. If anyone among you is interested, to independently pursue, perhaps its an idea worth investigating. Or if you've already tried it, it will be great to hear your views.

Thanks,
N

Effects of an Open Hole on the Biaxial Strengths of Composite Laminates.
Yuanchen Huang, Sung K. Ha, Jun Koyanagi, Jose Daniel D. Melo, Hisashi Kumazawa and Ippei Susuki.

Is there a version of Mic-Mac that had been tweaked to run correctly on Apple's spreadsheet Numbers?

Dear all, For those who may be interested. Do a search on a company called Rocky Mountain Composites on the patent server of google. Here is a link of the search today. This company has some of the best patents for aircraft production techniques. They benefited from a project that Toyota funded many years back when Toyota wanted to enter into the general aviation world.

A similar search for Boeing on composites is also available here. Then there is a great patent on VAP by EADS.

Happy reading and hope you get great ideas for your projects.

N

Hello,

The RTM problem allows one to evaluate Q/A but does not specify neither A nor the total amount of resin to be injected. Can you please specify A and the amount of resin?

Thanks,
N

Hi,

Here are some details about SQRTM (Same Qualified RTM): http://www.compositesworld.com/articles/sqrtm-enables-net-shape-parts

How do I fill out this table? (Prob 2.5)

Dear all,

I wonder if anyone among you have experience with Basalt fibers. What are the material allowables (A or B) that one can use with Basalt?

Thanks