COMPUTING SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DEFINING A GUIDE HAVING ONE OR MORE DEFINED SETS OF ORDERED PLY ORIENTATIONS

• Main Authors: BALABANOV, Vladimir, THOMPSON, Richard Joel, BLOM-SCHIEBER, Adriana Willempje
• Format: Patent
• Language: English; French; German
• Published: 14.09.2022
• Subjects: AFTER-TREATMENT OF THE SHAPED PRODUCTS, e.g. REPAIRING; CALCULATING; COMPUTING; COUNTING; ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING; PERFORMING OPERATIONS; PHYSICS; SHAPING OF MATERIAL IN A PLASTIC STATE, NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDEDFOR; SHAPING OR JOINING OF PLASTICS; TRANSPORTING; WORKING OF PLASTICS; WORKING OF SUBSTANCES IN A PLASTIC STATE, IN GENERAL

A method, a computing system and a computer program product are provided to efficiently define a guide that includes one or more defined sets of ordered ply orientations. In the context of a method, a plurality of stacking sequence rules are received. The method defines the guide including the one or more defined sets of ordered ply orientations in accordance with a constrained, linear integer optimization formulation. In this regard, the method defines the guide by dividing the guide into a plurality of blocks and determining a plurality of sublaminate stacks that satisfy the stacking sequence rules and that have a size limited by a size of the blocks. For each of the plurality of blocks, the method determines in accordance with the constrained, linear integer optimization formulation a sublaminate stack from among the plurality of sublaminate stacks that is compatible with a respective block, such as by selecting the sublaminate stack for a respective block based upon a number of other sublaminate stacks that have the same ply counts and are compatible with the respective block.