A Grammatical Approach for Customization of Laminated Composite Materials

The wide range of properties covered by the manufacturable fiber-matrix combinations of composite materials, along with their directional property characteristics, provides designers with material selection flexibility during designing composite material products. Meeting multiple property goals, however, complicates the design process as both the composite material selection and the component shape formation become complicated because the loading conditions and matrix calculations are needed to determine theoretical value of composite material properties. This paper presents a grammatical approach to simultaneously consider the shape and selection composite materials for a load-bearing component. Selection of composites involve determining the fiber and matrix, their volume fraction, and number of layers in different location of the component. A hip-replacement joint is designed using composite material to illustrate the approach.