Influence of Manufacturing Dependent Mechanical Properties on the Optimization of Ribbed LFT Structures

The mechanical material properties of long fiber reinforced thermoplast (LFT) structures, which are amongst others influenced by fiber orientation and distribution, are strongly dependent on the manufacturing process. This indicates that it is of great importance to integrate the manufacturing process and parameters that are influenced by it in the product development process. Therefore, the goal of this work is to show the importance of the consideration of manufacturing induced properties to find a design adapted to the material system of LFT. This work presents an optimization method that couples a compression molding simulation, representing the LFT-D process, with a structural simulation to investigate the influence of the consideration of manufacturing induced mechanical properties on the design of ribbed LFT components. For the optimization of the rib pattern, an evolutionary algorithm was implemented to address the vast number of possible solutions. With the study carried out in this contribution by comparing the results of the optimization method with and without considering manufacturing the significance of the consideration can be shown.