Crash and Statics Simulation of Short Fiber Reinforced Polymers in ESI Virtual Performance Solution Taking into Account Manufacturing Effects

The present contribution will present how local micromechanical properties can be used in an industrial way to assess the crash performance of parts made of short fiber reinforced polymers. To this end, local information about the material structure, predicted by a Manufacturing Process Simulation (MPS), is transferred and mapped automatically on the performance composite part model. The homogenization and mapping techniques will be presented for elastic and nonlinear application fields.

Short fiber reinforced injected thermoplastics are widely used in the automotive industry in mass production. Reliable prediction of the performance of short fiber reinforced thermoplastics by simulation for statics and crash simulation can be achieved only by accounting for the full manufacturing process coming from process simulation software.

In the subsequent analysis of the static and the crash performance, the impact of the manufacturing process and the resulting local variation of material properties will be analyzed and demonstrated through industrial applications.