LAMPAT: A software tool for the analysis and design of thick laminated composite structures

The Army Research Laboratory has recently developed an innovative analysis and design software tool for evaluating the mechanical performance of thick-section laminated composite material structures. The software tool has been given the acronym LAMPAT and is intended to be used in conjunction with traditional finite element analysis codes. LAMPAT implements a ``smearing-unsmearing`` methodology, an approach that is often employed in the structural analysis of thick multi-ply laminated composite structures. As a pre-processing tool, LAMPAT is used to generate the effective, homogeneous, three-dimensional properties of a laminated media for input into traditional finite element structural models. As a post-processing tool, LAMPAT is used to conduct a detailed, ply level based, failure assessment of the structure. Results are uniquely organized in such a manner that, when portrayed graphically, enable one to clearly visualize the critically loaded regions within a structure and identify the specific failure modes of concern. Failure assessment information, which can be based on a wide variety of lamina failure criteria, includes contour plots of (1) a margin of safety factor, (2) critical ply identification and (3) the specific mode of ply failure. In this paper, the theoretical basis for LAMPAT is reviewed and an illustrative example is presented tomore » demonstrate the utility of the software. LAMPAT represents a computationally efficient engineering design tool which greatly simplifies the failure analysis process of thick-section multi-layer composite structures.« less