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Composite Part Design and Manufacturing
Creo simplifies composite part design and manufacturing, allowing engineers to create strong, lightweight structures using diverse materials. It streamlines production, optimises performance, and reduces costs.
What are composites? Why are they important?
Composites are materials created by combining two or more different substances. Thin layers of materials are stacked and bonded using a resin to achieve the desired material properties, tailored for specific applications. Carbon fiber, fiberglass, and Kevlar are all considered composite materials. Composites allow engineers to create parts with superior strength-to-weight ratios, improved durability, and reduced overall weight.
What is composite part design?
Composite part design is crucial to modern engineering. With composite part design one can mix and match material layers, tailoring strength, flexibility, impact absorption and cost. Creo Composite Design and Manufacturing Extension (CDM) and Creo Composite Design and Manufacturing Advanced Extension (CDMA) are recent additions to the Creo suite. While both extensions provide composite design support. CDMA is more focused on manufacturing benefits and more advanced workflows when designing composites.
What is composite manufacturing?
Composite manufacturing is the process of defining the detailed instructions to produce composite parts. This involves generation of cores, individual flat ply layers, transitions, draping, and splicing features. CDMA provides all of this, plus support for automated plybook generation, seamlessly integrated in the Creo design environment.
What are the benefits of Creo Composite Design and Manufacturing?
With Creo Composite Design and Manufacturing (CDM) extensions, engineers can design, simulate, and validate composite products without leaving the Creo environment. Creo helps in the production planning of composite parts, assists in managing ply definition, and automates ply book generation.
- Fully integrated into Creo
- Engineers can design, simulate, and validate composite products without leaving Creo. With Creo, manufacturers can maintain an unbroken digital thread throughout the design process, improving quality and productivity.
- Supports simulation analysis
- Using Creo Simulation, engineers can access the mass properties of composite parts created in the design stage and perform structural analysis of these complex parts.
- Facilitates production planning
- Creo Composite Design and Manufacturing (CDM) simplifies ply definition and detailed instructions. Creo facilitates generation of cores, individual flat ply layers, transitions, draping, and splicing features.
- Powerful ply management
- Efficiently handle ply management using a dedicated laminate tree, including solid laminate and IML quilt options, while also calculating comprehensive laminate mass properties.
- Simplifies documentation
- Creo Composite Design and Manufacturing (CDM) extension automates the generation of process documentation based on the definition and stack-up of individual flat ply contours.
What is the composite design and manufacturing process?
The composite design and manufacturing process typically involves the creation of ply book drawings, which detail the specific arrangement and orientation of composite plys in a component. These drawings or flat patterns are crucial for ensuring the correct stacking sequence, fiber angles, and material choices to meet design requirements. The process includes design, engineering analysis, layup, quality control, and manufacturing, all guided by the information provided in the ply book drawings to achieve the desired composite part.
Want to learn more?
Contact an expert to learn more about composites design and manufacturing in Creo.