Lamina

The Lamina Input Window:

A lamina is a thin layer (ply) of composite and can contains parallel, continuous fibres, short fibers or be isotropic. It is the basic building unit of a laminate and finds very wide applications in composite structures specially in the form of laminates.

In CDS3.0 the lamina is built by first creating a lamina in the main tree. This will populate a row in the above lamina input window. The user then right clicks each cell to populate parameters, fibers matrices and fillers (if included in the microstructure). Each row then represents a unique lamina. The parameters columns defines the lamina parameters saved with each material and is shown below. This way lamina parameters can be associated with a particular material. (The user can also create a material in the Materials library with the sole purpose of storing various lamina parameters that can be used in a a number of laminas).

Micromechanics parameters in the Materials Input Section

Right clicking the parameters columns allows you to select from any material currently within CDS3. The materials are automatically sorted by type for ease of selection. You can also change the lamina type by right clicking the parameters section and selecting""Lamina Type" A number of micromechanics solutions are available. These include:

Continuous Fiber Lamina,
Planer Fiber Reinforcement (SMC),
Axial Fiber Reinforcement (Extrude),
Particulate Reinforcement,
Platelet Reinforcement,
Porous Composite,
Random Fiber Composite,
3D Fiber Reinforcement (General)

Right clicking fibers, matrices and fillers allow selection of materials to populate the lamina. The materials are sorted by type to ease in the selection process.

The theory for continuous fiber micromechanics software can be found here.

The remaining theoretical models are not in the current help site but will be added in the near future.

Editing Lamina Input properties

The lamina input properties can be edited directly within the lamina section by clicking on any material in the table and then editing the relevant data in the table below. Note that modifying this data also modifies material data in the Materials library. The data can be changed in the property table or interactively by sliding the material property slider bar on the right.