Composite Boat FE modeling and Simulation using Optistruct

1st Niraj Badheka 2nd Lavkumar Ambani 3rd Amikar Sharan

Project Lead Senior Engineer Project Manager
L&T Technology Services L&T Technology Services L&T Technology Services
L&T Knowledge City, Vadodara, L&T Knowledge City, NH No. 8, L&T Knowledge City, NH No. 8,
Niraj.Badheka@LntTechservices.com Lavkumar.Ambani@LntTechservices.com Amikar.Sharan@LntTechservices.com

Keywords: Boat, Composite, Ply, Laminate, Optistruct

Abstract
Composites are extensively used in aviation, marine, railway, and automobile industry because of its light weight and
unique mechanical properties.
This paper presents methodology for FE modeling and analysis of laminated fiber glass composite boat structure
using Altair Hypermesh and Optistruct. This work includes comparison between different composite modelling
techniques available in Optistruct. Different loading scenarios and boundary conditions applied to simulate operating
condition of boat is briefly discussed. Post processing of results for composite design assessment is performed
using analysis outputs like ‘Bi directional stress and strain’ and ‘Failure index’.

Introduction

A composite is a material that consists of two or more combined constituents which are combined at
a macroscopic level and are not soluble in each other. They are combined as such that overall
structure differ from the sum of the individual components. One of the constituent is called the
reinforcing phase and the one in which it is embedded is called the ‘matrix’. The reinforcing phase
material may be in the form of fibers, particles, or flakes. The matrix phase materials are generally
continuous. Examples of composite systems include concrete reinforced with steel and epoxy
reinforced with graphite fibers, etc.
The material property of the composites can be engineered according to the application requirements.
The ability to impart the required material property gives them great advantage when compared with
traditional homogeneous materials like Steel or Aluminum. Composites have best strength to weight
ratio. Applications like aerospace and marine structures, where the weight is a decisive factor, can
benefit tremendously with the usage of composite materials.
Technology advancements in composites has made possible to provide an alternative to conventional
materials. Now, Majority of the boat manufacturer prefer composites because of its light weight,
durability and relatively low cost compared to competing aluminum and wood. Composite boat hulls
are usually made of carbon fiber, fiberglass and aluminum. Use of composites in boat hull enable to
produce complex, curved shapes of hull with required rigidity, improve maneuverability, and speed
up the production process.
With advances in computer technology, there are certain classes of boats that have now become
candidates for routine finite element analysis (FEA) like luxury motor yachts, racing yachts, speed
boat and advance fishing boats. Potential for materials saving, shorter design to production period,
boat performance improvement has made Finite Element Analysis (FEA) a standard tool for boating
designers. This paper addresses the main steps involved in incorporating FEA into the boat design
and development which include element selection, meshing, material and layup definition, load and
support specification, analysis and results interpretation using Altair Hypermesh and Optistruct.

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FE Meshing of Composite Boat
Composites can be modeled using either shell or solid elements. In case of solid composite modeling
method, each ply needs to be modeled with at least one solid element layer. This method makes FE
model very heavy (due to number of elements) and complicated. Due to this reason, Majority of the
composite parts are FE modeled with shell elements. There are several components in a boat
assembly such as hull, deck, inner liner, floating material, hardtop, upper station, supporting frame
etc. It is recommended not to focus on small areas while analyzing full boat, if needed small
area/localized parts can be analyzed separately. Preferred approach to mesh the full boat assembly
should be with an optimum element size and simple connections which offers reasonable accuracy.
Usually boat designs are iterated several times and design assessment are generally performed by
comparing various concepts. So it is recommended to keep FE model simple and reasonable which
will take lesser time to modify existing mesh / design and uses optimum solution time / solution
resources.
Boat composite parts like hull, deck, inner liner, and hardtop are modeled with shell element to keep
structure simple. Hardtop and Upper station supporting frame is modelled with tetra element to
capture the exact geometry. All glue areas are connected with rigid elements as shown in Figure 1.
Floating material is modelled with penta elements with node to node connection with inner liner and
hull. Frame members and stiffeners are connected with node-node method. Engine, Fuel tank, Water
tank, Generator, Batteries, Radar and Antenna are modelled with point mass element at their
respective CG location and connected with RBE3 element at their respective mounting locations.

Figure 1: Meshing and Connection modeling for boat structure

Composite Modeling
Optistruct offers three composite modeling methods e.g. PCOMP, PCOMPG and PCOMPP.
PCOMPP is a ply based and external information relationship based composite modelling method.
PCOMP and PCOMPG are zone based model. Zones are typically defined to simplify the design
interpretation process and improve manufacturability but the design freedom is less extended with
this methods. In PCOMP method, user need to create laminate definition by selecting materials and
assigning thickness for each ply in HyperLaminate panel. While in PCOMPP method, Separate PLY
and Laminate definitions needs to be created as shown in Figure 2.

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 Figure 2: PCOMP and PCOMPP methods for composite modeling in Optistruct
PCOMP method is preferred if post processing is focused at laminate level but not extended to Plies
level. PCOMPP method facilitates result review for each particular ply which makes this method more
preferred than PCOMP. Advantages of PCOMPP method over PCOMP method are Layer Wise Ply
Visualization in HM, ease of Ply identification during result review as shown in Figure 3 and Figure 4

Figure 3: Ply and Laminate visualization for PCOMP and PCOMPP method

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 Figure 4: Results Review for PCOMP and PCOMPP method
Following Figure 5 shows laminate convention in Optistruct. The xy-plane defined by the global
coordinate system goes through the middle surface of the plate with z-axis defined using right hand
rule.1st ply always defined as the most negative z ply.

Figure 5: Laminate and Ply convention in Optistruct

Material Modeling and Material Orientation
Composite material properties in general are modeled with an orthotropic material model (e.g. MAT8
card in Optistruct). MAT8 card includes several properties like Modulus of elasticity (E1,E2),
Poisson's ratio (NU12), shear modulus, density (G12, G1Z, G2Z), Allowable stresses or strains (Xt,
Xc, Yt, Yc, S) etcs. The material orientation is important to establish the reference for ply angles.
Material orientation is important because it defines the direction for E1 and E2. Material Orientation
can be defined by Composite Panel in Optistruct profile.

Figure 6: Material Orientation for composites in Optistruct

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Automation in preprocessing while Boat FE Modeling
Boat composite parts are modeled using PCOMPP card which require to define 300/400 different
plies separately depending on boat model and size. Ply definition includes material, thickness, ply
orientation, element selection. To define 300-400 plies in FE model is tedious and lengthy task. It
increases the chances of human error. To overcome this challenge, Ply and Laminate automation
script are used to define plies and laminate in FE model. Automation script read data from excel
document and feed in Hypermesh. Script has reduced overall boat FE modeling time as well as
eliminated chances of error in ply and laminate definitions. Before running script, Materials and
Element sets used in ply definition should be available in HM file as shown in below Figure 7.

Figure 7: Automation script input file for Ply and Laminate generation using PCOMPP card

Load cases and Boundary condition

Load cases simulated for boat are bottom pressure with inertia relief, gravity in three directions,
engine thrust and modal analysis. Different boundary conditions are used for each loadcases. For
bottom pressure with inertia relief loadcase, support (SUPPORT1 type) constraint are used and
pressure is applied at hull area. For remaining all other loadcases, full constraint (SPC type) are used
as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8: Composite boat simulation loading and boundary conditions

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Post Post-processing and Assessment
For composite parts, Composite stresses and strains in X, Y directions, Composite Failure for plies
and Composite Failure Index for Laminates are reviewed during post processing. For assessment,
Composite stresses should be below respective material limit and strain should be below 1%. Failure
index limits are based on failure theory selected during preprocessing. In this simulation, TSAI-WU
failure criteria was selected during composite property definition. The Tsai Wu criterion predicts failure
when the failure index in a laminate or in ply reaches 1.
Another method for design assessment is comparative study of new design results with baseline
existing design results. Figure 10 shows ply failure plot for bottom pressure load case.

Figure 9: Composite results used for composite design evaluation

Figure 10: Composite failure index results based on TSAI-WU failure criteria

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 Figure 11: Composite Boat FE modeling and simulation methodology

Conclusion
With methodology shown in
Figure 11, one can evaluate and validate new composite boat designs in Optistruct easily and can
reduce overall development cycle time. Use of script in defining Ply and Laminate has reduces overall
FE modeling time and also reduces the chances of human error.

References
[1] Don Campbell1, Brian Jones2, Finite Element Analysis Of Composite Boats
[2] Composite Pre-Processing, Altair Engineering, Inc.
[3] Ben DiMiero, Generate a laminate from an excel spreadsheet, bdimiero@altair.com