Fiber reinforced plastics have a wide application in automotive and aerospace industry due to their good mechanical properties, low density and high lightweight construction potential. Due to the complicated interdependencies between the reinforcing fibers, the matrix, the geometry, the manufacturing process control and the resulting mechanical properties, it is a challenge for product developer to find a suitable design. Guidelines described in the literature only provide general information and do not take account of the given complexity.

The aim of the presented work is to develop a construction catalog for the design of fiber reinforces composites to support the product developers.

For this investigation 10 geometrically different plate shaped finite element models with 12 bending load cases have been built in the CAE environment Abaqus. The models consists of two domains. A lower area, which represents the flat bending plate and is set as non-design space. The upper area is defined as the design space for the topology optimization. Each of the 120 analysis models have been topology optimized using an optimality criteria based approach, implemented in the commercial tool Tosca. Based on the optimization results, appropriate designs under consideration of the fiber orientations, manufacturing process control and matrix material were develop.

The results were discussed with experts and specific guidelines documented in the construction catalog.