Finite element modelling of continuous fiber–reinforced composites produced by automated manufacturing

With the advent of automated, continuous filament placement technologies, the possibilities for reinforcement placement in composite manufacturing have been further expanded, as the reinforcement path can be continuously varied within the layer. This allows far more efficient structures to be created, resulting in a further reduction in the weight of the structure compared to conventional composites. At the same time, this manufacturing freedom also poses a major challenge for the structural design of composite components, as simulation methods based on meso-level homogenization are mostly not usable due to the lack of periodicity of the reinforcement structure. In our paper, we have established a structural modelling method using finite element analysis (FEA) for fused filament fabrication-based additive manufacturing of continuous fiber–reinforced composites. For modelling the reinforcement structure properly, we used the base-coordinate sweep (BCS) modelling method and for capturing progressive failure mechanisms we used Ansys LS-Dyna with the MAT54 material card. Based on the simulations and tests performed, we demonstrated that the method we present is suitable for the engineering modelling of continuous fiber–reinforced 3D printed composites.